Perpetual Plan B

Let The Season Begin....

2011-12-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple photos from the Nativity scenes the kids at our church did for the Christmas party on Saturday.

Here is the cute little Joseph. He looks kind of familiar, doesn't he?

Joseph, Mary and the donkey.

A nice, quiet little Nativity.

If only Christmas could go back to being that simple again.

Merry Christmas!

Worst Mom EVER (Christmas Edition)

2011-12-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Well, this holiday season has started off just like the last few..........with Austin being very, very NAUGHTY!

I have been trying to figure out when to take him to see Santa, but I really, really want him to be good, even if it is just for ONE day, before we go.

Here are just A FEW of the things he has been doing lately:

He has found - and eaten - more than his weight in candy, almost every single day. I don't know how he always manages to sniff out where I have been hiding the treats, but he does. Since he has been eating so much junk, he is not eating the healthy stuff, making him mean and very, very unreasonable.

He won't clean his room, he won't do his homework, he won't go to bed on time, he won't brush his teeth, etc., etc.

And another thing, he has now earned the code name "raccoon" because of his penchant for "borrowing" things. Little, shiny things. (Remember the jewelry incident from last spring?) He actually came home from the live Nativity that our little town puts on with two little LED candles in his pockets. He swiped them from the luminaries they had, lighting the pathway there. I have also found many of the fake coins they use in school to learn how to count out money. I don't dare take him anywhere, because I'm afraid of what he may pick up "accidently".

Austin has been so naughty that our elf, Nutmeg Jim, has even come and gone home already. Nutmeg Jim even brought Austin a lump of coal instead of a present, which Austin was able to trade in for a book when he got his room clean, with a LOT of help from yours truly. Once Austin earned the book, he kept saying "A book. I got a book." (Like, what was he expecting, a million dollars?) Funny thing, it was a book he had asked for (I think there was even some crying involved) a month or so ago. I told him to give the book a chance for 10 minutes and he LOVES the book. He was just being a pill.

Anyway, I have just had it with him. I am so DONE with him and his attitude. I THOUGHT I had it under control until last night. Earlier in the day, I had found what was a brand new bag of marshmallows in the family room. There was about a third of the bag left. I'm pretty sure I could figure out who had eaten them. Then last night Ally asked if she could have some marshmallows in her hot chocolate. We found the bag, EMPTY. Austin, of course, said "I didn't do it."

I blew my top and said those fateful words that I will NEVER, EVER be able to take back:

"When you see Santa I bet he will take you off his lap and throw you on the ground and JUMP on you!

Yes, I actually said "jump". Not something llike "accidently step" or "tiptoe around". Ally swears I threw the word "kick" in there too. I didn't know I had such violent tendencies hidden so deep inside of me. I wonder if I need counseling. (Actually I wonder if AUSTIN will need counseling.)

In reply, Austin ran BAWLING from the room. (Which is actually the same reaction he had when he got the lump of coal.) I was HORRIFIED! I didn't mean to say that at all. I really am not a mean mom. I'm probably in the situation that I am in with Austin being so naughty because I am too nice of a mom.

So, I've pretty much squashed any holiday spirit we were still hanging onto around here. Austin seems to have forgiven me this morning, but I still feel terrible.

(On the upside, I'm pretty sure that he still believes in Santa Claus, because I didn't know for sure until he got so upset.)

'Tis the Season.....

2011-11-19T08:06:00.001-08:00

To start blogging again!

So much has happened in the last few months, so much I don't want to forget...

Some really great things that I need to document and, well, some not so great things that I don't want to repeat. Ever. (And some that we are still in the middle of and still trying to figure out - not fun.)

My camera is FULL. Both memory cards, with so many things I haven't even begun to talk about. Photos that need a home to make room for more memories.

So, now that I'm committed, let's see how things go.

Hope to see you again REAL soon.

(Good heavens, it has been so long since I've posted that my whole blogspot has changed. Now I can't even get this to post. I must have been gone a LONG time!)

Two Great Quotes:

2011-09-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

I have recently run across a couple of worthwhile quotes. They are too great not to copy and share:

1. "What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?" (from Sophia's blog.)

2. “Real friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t feel that you’ve done a permanent job.” Erwin T. Randall (from Taffy's facebook page.)

One More Confession From My Life Of Crime, Newport Edition

2011-08-30T22:54:00.000-07:00

I shoplifted. Yep, I did it. I confess.

I was an adult too. I even made my 12 year old daughter act as lookout.

Now before you decide to "unfriend" me. Let me explain:

I've mentioned before that one of my most brilliant ideas is the "12 year old trip". It actually came about because around the time Morgan turned 12, I needed a vacation. In a big way. Austin was turning 2 and I had been home with one kid or another (or pregnant and too sick to do anything worthwhile) for 12 years straight.

I needed a vacation that was REALLY a vacation. Not a family trip. Not a vacation that involved sippy cups in any way.   And, especially a vacation where I could call the shots; eat where I wanted, do what I wanted and, most importantly, RELAX. You get the idea. (For the record, I don't think my husband knows the meaning of the word relax. I've needed a vacation to recover from about every other vacation we've been on together. I'm not complaining, we've gone on some pretty great trips together. It's just that none of them involved hanging out and doing nothing for any stretch of time.)

I tried to figure out who might be the perfect candidate for my vacation and it dawned on me that Morgan was at a pretty good age to travel. She was old enough to be a fun companion, we liked to do lots of the same things AND was still young enough that I could sway her to like my ideas for what was fun. And I was excited to get some quality one-on-one time together.

So, I proposed the idea of a 12 year old trip to the family. Once each of the kids turned 12, I would take them on a trip, just the two of us. Morgan was thrilled with the idea, Hal was nice enough to play along and Ally wasn't so thrilled, even though I promised her I'd take her on a similar trip in 3 years. (She ended up going to New York City, lucky girl.)

For our trip, Morgan and I picked Newport, Rhode Island.   Well, to be totally honest, I picked Newport. She went along with it and seemed pretty happy when I explained about the mansions we'd see, and everything else we would do.

When Morgan was a baby, Hal and I had driven with some friends of ours, the Trettes, from Boston to Newport. They showed us the mansions and Hal and I had walked along the cliff walk quite a ways and then back while the Trettes stayed in the car with Morgan. We didn't get to actually go into any of the mansions, just look at them. I had been dying to go back ever since then, but didn't think Hal would ever really want to go on a trip and do just that. So it worked out great.

Morgan and I had a ball, staying in a fun bed and breakfast with the best food, touring the mansions, etc. We also hung out at the beach one afternoon so she could swim in the ocean, which was a little chilly, but we were able to collect some shells for souvenirs. We just had an all-around good time.

The day before we left, Morgan and I checked out the little shopping area down by the wharf. We bought some fun souvenirs and ended up at a t-shirt shop. We found Morgan a Newport t-shirt and then we saw a navy blue hoodie that she liked. I liked it too. It only came in adult sizes, and the smallest one was a medium. It was the only one that size. The rest were large or bigger. We decided to buy it anyway, since it would fit me and she would grow into it in a year or two.

We picked up the hoodie and the only medium left didn't have a string. I really didn't think it was a big deal because that's when all the news stories were coming out about taking the strings out of your little kids' hoodies so they wouldn't get hung up on them on the playground. I can't remember Morgan being too upset about the string either, so I'm not sure why I decided that we needed to have a string in our hoodie.  I asked the girl at the counter if we could just take a string out of one of the other hoodies and she told me no.

I don't know why I was so surprised that she said no, but I guess it made me more determined that we needed that string. I was paying for a whole hoodie and by darn, that included a string. She told me it was either buy that one without a string or buy a different size with a string. No discout for the one without a string either.

Well, I guess I just needed that string more than I needed to be honest, so after talking to Morgan I decided that I was going to get a string for that hoodie, one way or another. So, you guessed it, with Morgan acting as lookout, I stole a string out of one of the other hoodies.

Now before you think I go around stealing things on a regular basis, let me assure you that is not the case. I'm so nervous about anyone even thinking I might shoplift that if I need to get something out of my purse in a store I will go right up to an employee and say "I need to get something out of my purse, so I want you to watch me so you know I'm not putting something in it from the store." Of course now that I think about it, that seems much more suspicious than just unzipping my purse to get my shopping list out of it.

Anyway, I felt so nervous the whole time I was paying for the hoodie and t-shirt. I can't remember where exactly I stuffed the string, if I put it in a pocket or up my sleeve or just what I did. I do know I was just sure they had a hidden camera watching and that they were going to follow me out of that store and arrest me with my impressionable 12 year old daughter watching the whole thing. As soon as we were far enough away from the store, I stuffed that string in the hoodie as fast as I could, to hide the evidence.

Let me just say if I were going to start committing any sort of crime, it wouldn't be shoplifting. I don't know how people do it. I just felt sick the whole time. I had a boyfriend once, and it was a pretty long term relationship, that I caught shoplifting. We were in Kmart for some reason and I turned to say something and thumped him in the chest and my finger hit something hard and it rattled. It took me a minute to realize that he had shoplifted a cassette tape. That was pretty much the end of the relationship.

So back to the hoodie. Morgan wore it in good health for many years. She finally gave it up, probably because she is pretty much fully grown and it's still too big for her. So now it belongs to me.

String and all.

(On a much more positive note, I am going back to the scene of the crime in a month or so. I am so excited! This time I am going with one friend to visit another friend who lives in Connecticut. AND we are going back to Newport one of the days. After our family roadtrip a few weeks ago, I have sorely needed a real vacation. Looks like I'll be getting one. Yay, a girl trip!)

Quote From The Fridge

2011-08-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

I tore this out of the newspaper a month or so ago and stuck it on the fridge. I keep thinking it's going to get lost in the shuffle (it's only about an inch big), so I thought I'd put it here.

"You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for your presence. And the good that is in you must be spread to others." Gordon B. Hinckley

It's one more thing to think about as I go through the usual back-to-school assesment of my life and what I want to accomplish while the kids are in school. It seems like I'm always trying to make what I do matter. Deep cleaning the kitchen, clearing out clutter and re-arranging and organizing things are always first on my list each fall. Worthy goals, yes. But nothing that would be reported at my funeral as having long-term meaning to anyone else.

It's also a time I promise myself that I will start reading my scriptures regularly again, exercising and drinking more water. AND it's always a time that I swear that THIS is the year I will get into a real routine so I don't waste so much time trying to decide what to start with each day. I've never, ever considered myself a perfectionist, but I think I spend so much time trying to figure out the perfect routine (for me) that I just have never figured out any routine at all. Also, I guess if I take better care of myself, I will be in better shape to help take care of others.

So, here is the tentative routine, off the top of my head and definitely ready to change as I see fit:

Monday: laundry and deep cleaning day, clutter
Tuesday: floors and bathrooms
Wednesday: errands and grocery shopping
Thursday: volunteer at elementary school and big cooking day
Friday: paperwork and special projects

I also need a basic daily schedule and I need to also schedule in some FREE time, so I don't feel guilty for sitting down and reading a book. Funny I don't feel guilty wasting time on the computer, but I don't feel like I can just sit down and read, which I honestly love more.

Ok, so that's a jumble of thought, but it's nice to get it out of my head and onto (virtual) paper at least. I'm also realizing that I forgot something very important, adding in what the kids will do to help each day. My friend Linda gave me her basic schedule last year and she included that, which was a great idea.

Anyone out there have a great schedule that works for them?

My New Motto

2011-06-10T19:45:00.001-07:00

(Stolen from Katie, without even asking her permission.)

The Purse That Almost Got Me Arrested

2011-06-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

It's cute though, right?

So the story is, that when I went to Italy I knew I wanted to get my sister-in-law a purse. The timing was convenient, since her birthday was about two weeks after I got home.

One of the first things our tour guide told us was to make sure and not buy purses from anyone who had them on the ground. Blanket or not, the ground was no good. On a table was ok, they were legitimate vendors, but the illegal ones apparently had them on the ground, ready to swoop them up and take off at a moment's notice. She also said that any buyers were subject to a $1,000 dollar (or euro, I can't remember which) fine AND - to add insult to injury - would have the purse confiscated.

No problem, we thought. We can live with those guidelines.

Our shopping got off to a slow start, so one of the first shopping days we went to an outdoor market. I didn't see anything that really grabbed me until right when we were leaving. On a table (thankfully) I found a cute bag that was mustard colored and looked like it was woven. It was cute, though you could tell it wasn't great quality. For the price though, 5 euros, I was pretty happy with it.

I wanted to get a purse for myself too, so I was going to try and buy two purses that I liked and would be happy with, in case I ended up with either one of them. I was going to let my sister-in-law pick.

Over the rest of the trip though, I didn't see any other purses that I particularly loved. (At least not ones that I could afford. I fell in love with a few in a shop in Venice. My friend Julie bought one that I absolutely loved. I'm glad that at least she got to have it, since I couldn't. See what a good friend I am.)

Anyway, it got down to the very last day, the very last couple of hours, stopping to look at purses everywhere we went. We were by the Pantheon and there it was, The Purse. The one I'd been looking for. The one I knew I was going to get for my sister-in-law. I went up to the guy and asked how much. He told me the price and I tried to decide in my head, converting euros to dollars, while also trying to remember exactly how many euros I still had, if I could afford it. It was the last day, after all and I was down to not much. It was definitely more than I had wanted to spend, especially for a knock off. I turned around, hoping he'd play the game.

As I walked away, he lowered the price a little. I turned and offered him less.

"Good quality." he assured me. "Very good price."

That wasn't the problem. It was the lack of funds at my disposal. After bargaining a little longer, we came to an agreement. I couldn't believe it! I had finally found what I hoped would be the perfect purse for my sister-in-law.

I walked around, happily clutching at my prize. We walked through the Pantheon, all the time I felt so happy and relieved that I had finally found what had eluded me for days.

When we walked back out, I was surprised that the purse sellers were no longer there. That should have been my first clue.

We walked back to Piazza Navonna and I was happy to find some women we had met and become friendly with on our tour. I was so excited to show them the purse. I eagerly got it out of the bag and was holding it up like a trophy to show them. They oohed and ahhed appropriately.

I couldn't figure out what the little Italian couple next to them started getting so agitated over. They started shushing me and making gestures. Finally one of the ladies from our tour said "I think you'd better put it away."

We then noticed the little "paddy wagon" that was parked in the square. Believe it or not, the back was full of confiscated purses!

I couldn't believe it! In my excitement of buying "the purse", I had forgotten our guide's warning of not buying one off of the ground. I didn't know what to do then. I was already carrying a purse and the one I had just bought was in a plastic bag. I tried to keep it hidden as well as I could, but I was definitely spooked. I walked around for the hour or so that we had left, looking over my shoulder. I swear there ended up being a policeman or two on every corner from then on. I forgot every once in a while to keep it hidden and would grab it by the handles and carry it like a purse. Luckily I had enough women around to remind me to keep in under my arm. I was actually glad to pay the money and hide out in a public restroom for a while.

Well, we did make it to the bus, where I breathed a sigh of relief.

I'll tell you what though, if that's what it feels like to be a criminal and have to constantly look over your shoulder I think my life of crime has come to an end. I do also feel sad for allegedly giving money to terrorists, so I guess I'm especially glad that they got Osama Bin Laden last month. (Not sure if the two situations are even remotely connected, but I'll take whatever means I can to make myself feel less guilty about the whole situation.)

Revisiting Italy - The Umbrella

2011-05-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

I am finally at a point where I can think about my trip to Italy last fall. I don't know why, but this is one of my favorite memories. I am a little off-kilter, I know.

Airport security must have searched my bag before our flight to Italy. By searched, I mean RANSACKED. I didn't realize how bad the damage was until the very first day in Rome when I tried to open my umbrella because it was starting to rain. It looked a little mangled and when I opened it up it was severely broken.

Well, I didn't want to get wet, so I used it anyway. I got some strange looks, including from many people on our tour. I guess it was pretty embarrassing for people to be seen with me. I tried not to let it bother me because by darn, I did NOT want to buy another umbrella. I had brought mine from home and THEY broke it. It was the principle of the thing. At least that's what I told my cheap self.

I don't think we used our umbrellas again until we were in Florence and that day it rained pretty hard too. By then we knew all the people on our tour well enough for some of them to comment to me to throw the darn thing away. Again, I just figured I could make it through this one more day and it would be fine. I had lots of perfectly good umbrellas at home so I was not going to buy another one, especially when I needed to save my money for necessities, like gelato and scarves.

Anyway, by then even my mom was embarrassed to be seen with me. Actually, now that I think of it, she had probably been embarrassed from day one.

Our little group had been walking a while and were close to the Pitti Palace, so I said I'd run ahead and check on ticket prices and hours for tours so my mom and some of the others could rest a little.

As I was walking up by the line to read the sign that had the information posted on it I realized that people were looking at me and talking about me in Italian (at least I think it was Italian). I thought that they were thinking I was trying to get ahead of them in line, so I was going to try and explain, but then I figured out what was going on. They were making fun of my umbrella. All these little old Italian (I think) people were literally pointing and laughing at me. One even took a picture. I don't think I have EVER felt so self-conscious as an adult as I did right then. I was so embarrassed that I literally turned and ran away (yes, just like Napoleon Dynamite).

Well you can bet that my umbrella ended up in the first garbage can I could find. The sad thing is that that was the only day I took the time to do my hair and straighten it, so it was pretty much a waste of time. I should have just slept in a little longer. Oh well.

Note: This photo was NOT taken by the people who were laughing at me. It was taken by my friend Julie, who I met on our tour. Ironically, it is the best photo of me from the whole trip. I don't think the umbrella looks too bad here. You can't see the worst mangled metal spike thing that wasn't attached to any fabric and kept poking me in the head and catching my hair in it. I think by this time I'd either bent it up or broken it off completely.

What The "Dumb" Kids Do

2011-05-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

One day, when Morgan was about 6 or 7 I found a name scratched right into the front newel post of our staircase. The one that was the most visible from the front door.

It said "Dad".

I found that fairly comical, even though I was a little ticked off about the damage.

Morgan must have heard me talking to someone else, saying that only the dumb kids carve their own names into things. We also joked about how it really must have been Hal that had carved his name to throw suspicion on someone else.

That must have gotten her thinking, because a week or so later I noticed on the other side of the bannister a new name, "Morgan".

I was NOT amused.

Think You're Having A Bad Parenting Week?

2011-05-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

So, here's part one of the long version of a very long story. I'll post what I wrote two weeks ago now, and then once I can stand it I'll post "the rest of the story". (Parenting makes me TIRED some days!)

Let's start with some seemingly unrelated facts:

My mom is cleaning out some stuff in her house. One day she brought over a big box full of costume jewelry that she said we should go through together sometime.

Morgan got asked to the Junior Prom the day we left for vacation so when we got home we went right to the dress shop so they would have time to alter whichever dress she chose. The prom was less than a week away, so that was pushing it time-wise.

The dress she picked out this time is a pretty brown one with some nice beading on it. Her rhinestone jewelry wouldn't look good with the dress, so we asked my mom if we could look through her jewelry and see if she had anything we could use.

We got the box out and started going through it, piece by piece. Austin started looking pretty interested and got right in there with us and started digging through things. He started grabbing rings and watches right and left. I had to tell him to stay out of things.

It turned out that my mom didn't have anything that was just right for Morgan's dress. She wears a lot more black, so I told Morgan we could see what I had. I wear a lot of brown, but I don't have a ton of jewelry, like my mom. And all hers is a lot nicer than what I might have. Most of hers came from QVC. Mine usually comes from Kohl's or Claire's (or Kmart, to be honest). I do have three nice rings that I realized I had never really talked to the kids about before. They are from when they were born. I bought a nice ring for when Morgan, Landon and Ally were born, that I was planning on giving to them (or their wife) when they grew up. When Austin was born we didn't have extra money, because I wasn't working anymore, but I decided he can have Landon's ring to remember his brother. (Weird tangent, I know.)

I started to put my mom's jewelry away and Austin threw a fit, asking if he could have at least a ring or a watch. I handed him a gold watch that was pretty tarnished and worn out. He then begged for a ring. He'd never had a ring and he'd always wanted one (and he was crying). So, I gave in and gave him a gold ring that looked like it was made out of tiny chain link. I tried to pick one that I thought nobody else would really want. My mom did have some really nice rings and among them was my grandma's college ring and also my mom's mother's' ring, which I was surprised that my mom had put in the box. I wonder if she hadn't really looked at anything before she sent it, just threw in a couple of jewelry boxes and miscellaneous shoe boxes of things to sort out later.

We then got out my things and I showed the kids the rings from when they were born. I also came across Hal's grandpa's wedding ring that he had inherited. I have to mention here, because it is so ironic, Hal HATES jewelry. As in, he gets wigged out if he has to pick up a ring or something. That's why it is so ironic that it is almost comical that he ended up with his grandpa's ring and his brother got the sword that was used in the Battle of Waterloo. Hal is a huge history buff. Oh well. Anyway, I showed the kids that ring too and Austin was very interested in it.

After we looked a little and Morgan found a couple of necklaces to try when her dress comes back, I put all the jewelry away. That was pretty much the end of this story, as far as I knew. This was on Saturday.

Monday, late in the afternoon I was in the kitchen starting to fix dinner. My nice neighbor, Valerie, called me. She said, "I have a strange question to ask you. Our neighbor girl is here and she has a really nice ring with a green stone that she says Austin gave her on the bus. It looks like a REALLY nice ring. Not one a kid would have."

For a minute I started to say I didn't know what she was talking about and that it was probably fine, but then it slowly dawned on me . . . . . . my mom's jewelry! Austin was pretty interested in it. The only thing I couldn't figure out is why he gave it to that particular girl. He was better friend's with Valerie's daughter. I told Valerie that yes, I definitely needed that ring back. I had her ask the girls if they had seen any other rings. The whole time I kept stirring my dinner, trying to make sense in my head of what had happened. She checked and the girls said he had a bunch of rings in ring boxes at school, and on the bus AND at church.

I then hung up the phone and tried to talk to Austin, who vehemently denied everything. It is REALLY hard to get any kind of concrete information out of someone who just doesn't want you to know how bad the situation really is. He started crying hysterically and saying he was sorry he'd ever been born!

Valerie came over a couple of minutes later with a ring that WAS really nice and I didn't even recognize as one of my mom's that I had seen because there were so many of them. Valerie then told me some more information. Austin had also told the girls that he knew where the rings were hidden and also mentioned a wedding ring. Well, I RAN to my room because on Sunday I was sitting in church and had realized that I forgot to put on my wedding ring. It was Monday and I'd been home all day so I hadn't bothered to put on any jewelry. My ring wasn't where I had left it, but I did find it close by. I went back to Valerie and was talking again when I remembered the rings of mine that I had shown the kids. I sent Morgan back to check on them in my jewelry box. It took her a while, but she said it looked like they were all there. After a few more minutes, what Valerie had said rang another bell in my head. Wedding ring. I had shown Austin Grandpa Fronk's wedding ring. I sent Morgan back again to check on that one because she said she didn't remember seeing it. She was gone a LONG time, so I let Valerie go then because I was quietly freaking out. Morgan hadn't found it yet, but after searching we finally did find that ring. Valerie also reconfirmed the fact that Austin had taken rings to church AND given one to the Primary teacher. (So why hadn't SHE called me?)

Morgan then remembered that he did have some kind of fancy boxes in the pockets of his church pants, so she started searching around to see what she could find. I do remember thinking it was awfully easy the day before to get him to hand over his magic wand and long pointy finger on a stick thing that he is always sneaking in his pants at church. Usually he puts up a fight and sneaks them into his Primary class. I should have known something else was up.

By this time Austin could tell he was going to be in some pretty big trouble, so he high tailed it out of there. He ran to his room while Valerie was there and I couldn't find him for a long time. Really, there aren't many places he can hide in his room and I knew he hadn't run back past me so he had to be somewhere in one of the bedrooms or bathroom. I checked under all the beds and in all the closets. Finally, Ally (my fabulous middle child) found him hiding under his covers like the little coward he is. (Yes, I am still mad, even almost two weeks later.)

Well, after a long, mostly one-sided conversation with Austin; me conversing and possibly yelling at times, him crying hysterically, I found out a little more. Austin admitted he had also given a ring to his friend Dallin, along with Martha and the Primary teacher. Valerie had called back saying that her girls also saw him give a ring to a boy named Jackson and some unidentified "blond girl" on the bus.

(to be continued, because I am too emotionally wiped out to finish...)

Edited to add: Long story short - recovered 3 rings; never got back anything from "Jackson", though I talked to two different Jacksons' moms and never figured out exactly which blond girl on the bus was the recipient of my son's generosity. This was also the same week my daughter, Ally, split her head open at 6:30 a.m. the day I was supposed to talk to the bus driver. When I finally did talk to him, a week later, he said I should have talked to him the week before and it was probably too late to do anything about it.

Anyway, here is the result of Ally's misfortune, eight shiny new stitches, luckily somewhat hidden in the eyebrow region.

And here is Morgan in her prom dress with the one necklace that kind of matched it.

Here's hoping that next week is better. (And NO, I haven't told my mom yet, so if you see her, just smile and say "Hi." and then just keep on keepin' on. Thanks.)

Apparently I Need Reading Glasses Too....

2011-05-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I was getting ready for bed the other day. On my bathroom counter I found this cute little card that said "Uplift With Courage". It seemed like a nice little sentiment.

I started thinking to myself that maybe I should stick it on the mirror in the kids' bathroom, just to give them a little boost.

Maybe it will inspire them to be a little nicer to the kids at school or in their group of young women at church, I thought. Maybe it will inspire them to run for President someday. Maybe, just maybe.....

Maybe I should have looked a little closer. Upon further inspection I realized that it actually said, "Uplift with COVERAGE".

Uplift with coverage? Huh? What does that even mean?

Then I realized where I had seen that little card before. It came off of the bra I had bought the day before.

An Enlightening Conversation

2011-04-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Me: "I don't like my new glasses. I think the lenses magnify my eyes, which also magnifies all my wrinkles. They look worse when I wear the glasses."

Morgan: "Let's see. Put them on and then take them off again."

I did what she said and, much to my chagrin, she told me: "Nope, it's not your lenses. Your wrinkles look the same. You can just see them better with your glasses on."

Darn.

And in other news: I have now started to get over some of the truly traumatic parenting events from last week. Not sure if I'll recover from at least one of them. Austin is now banned from any and all jewelry.

My Budding Artists

2011-03-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

Ally is really good at drawing dragons and warriors and stuff. AND she does have some mad nunchuck skillz - for real. She took karate and everything and has a nice orange belt to prove it.

(Is it "numchuck" or "nunchuck"? It sounds like numchuck, but when I google it, the most legitimate sources say "nunchuck". What's up with that?)

Morgan said it took her over three hours to do the shading on my upper lip.

Apparently there's more where THIS came from.

(But hopefully I won't be the recipient of it. I don't know if my self-esteem could handle much more.)

35

2011-03-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

I am in awe of my daughter, Morgan.

She got a 35 on her ACT.

That's almost a perfect score. In fact she did get a perfect score (36) on her English and reading sections. She got a 35 on her science, which surprised even her, and then her math was a 31, which is still a great score - in fact it's the same as her composite from the last time she took the test.

AND she was really sick the day she took the test. She had already missed 2 days of school. She was so sick, I told her not to worry about the test at all and that she could take it again in a month or two.

I'm sorry to brag here. I just couldn't keep it to myself. I'm so proud that I'm bursting.

Bursting, I tell you.

Random Photos And The Short Stories That Accompany Them

2011-03-12T16:37:00.000-08:00

This is a pinata of Summer Wheatley. We ended up with it after a Napoleon Dynamite party at our friends' house last night.

Ally won this bling as a prize. Austin was VERY sad, so now he is the proud owner. He started out as Pedro (hence the leftover moustache if you look closely) but is now Kip.

This is the new rug I got for the laundry room. I was going to paint it this shade of blue (with some new white beadboard) but now I wonder if there is enough blue in the rug. I like the rug because it reminds me a little of how they decorated The Wynn in Las Vegas. (And it looks "happy". I try to surround myself with as much happiness as possible because there is a lot of junk out there that could drive me crazy if I let it, and sometimes I do.)

This is what our downstairs bathroom looked like last week. It is now painted, though to be honest I don't totally love the color. We were trying to work with what we had. Hopefully it will work for 5 or 10 years and then we can deal with it again then. I'll show the finished room when I get the trim up and change out the light fixture and hopefully frame up the mirror too, which may take a few weeks.

This is what the walls looked like from removing the wallpaper and border from the top half of the room. Not sure what happened, if the walls weren't primed before the wallpaper or they had to use extra strong wallpaper paste to put the border on. All I know is it was a pain to fix.

This next one makes me laugh. Every time I look at it.

Here's the story: I happened to have a good hair day a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted to have a picture of myself because good hair days for me are few and far between and I wanted photographic evidence. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone to take a picture of me but I finally asked Morgan and she halfheartedly snapped a photo but it wasn't very good. It was from far away and kind of dark. I really wanted a good picture, so I tried to casually snap a candid looking shot of myself while I was pretending to watch t.v. Unfortunately I missed most of me - except for my nose, but I got a good shot of Morgan. This photo is funny because it looks totally staged but it isn't. That's just what she happened to look like right then - like she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Unfortunately it isn't a very flattering angle of her either. Maybe next time she'll take her job more seriously when I ask her to document an important occasion.

And last but not least, the picture that had Hal laughing so hard he was crying and he totally offended Austin's 1st grade teacher......

Austin came home one day saying that they had made silhouettes of themselves. I was so excited because Hal has a silhouette of himself at about that age (which I'm hoping we can get from his mom - he's not sure where it ended up) and I thought it would be fun to hang them together. I asked Austin how his silhouette looked and he kept saying "My head looks berry, berry skinny." I didn't think much more about it until Hal came home and tried to tell me how hilarious it looked. He said he just kept laughing and he hoped the teacher didn't see him, but he didn't think she did. The next time I went to help at the school I saw it. Austin's teacher said "Your husband was laughing at this so hard he was crying." I got the whole story from her. This was the first time she had ever done the silhouettes. Her student teacher had wanted to do them. They had a hard time holding the kids still while they traced the silhouettes and then the kids cut them out themselves. I think Austin looks kind of like a sleestak from Land of the Lost. I said something about his mouth and the teacher told me when she had drawn the silhouette, his mouth had not been open. He added that part himself.

I'm glad he doesn't really look like that!

It Should Be Illegal For Old Women To Have Internet Access

2011-02-26T09:08:00.000-08:00

Because it might make their children have violent thoughts about what they might have to do to get their mothers to quit calling them and asking the same questions over and over.

And over and over.

And over. And over.

And over.

Questions like "Which is my username again and which is my password?" and "My internet is little, how do you make it big again?" and my personal favorite, "Which button do you push to turn the computer on?"

And, hypothetically speaking, it is really annoying to have to remind your mom to use the virus scan religiously if she is going to be on the "hollywood" websites searching for news about Robert Pattinson. (Honestly, it's mainly just annoying to have a mom who does nothing more than spend her time looking up information on movie stars for hours on end.)

And, hypothetically speaking again, it is REALLY annoying to have to FIX your mom's computer after she has been on "hollywood" websites and got the computer messed up because she didn't know what a virus scan is and "forgot" to ask you about it. (Seriously, of all the questions she did ask, this is the one she didn't.)

And.

It is also annoying when your mom says the reason we pulled up something that looked different from what saw at her friend's house on a particular website A YEAR AGO is because I must have spelled "Robsessed" incorrectly. Like, how many different ways are there to spell Robsessed, for Pete's sake? Then she smugly told me that I must have forgotten the .com and that's why it didn't look like she thought it should. It wasn't even worth explaining that if we got a website, I certainly did put the .com. And, just because it didn't look like it did at her friend's house is because they change information on websites every now and then. I won't even go there, it's like arguing with a toddler.

And people wonder why I would be "Team Jacob" if I had to pick a side.

I'm sure you must all be wondering why I'm not worried about her reading this and getting mad at me.

Well, let's just say that I'm pretty comfortable with her level of ignorance right now. I'm sure she doesn't even know what a "blog" is, and since mine doesn't involve Robert Pattinson, or any other Twilight characters or movie stars, I think I'm safe for quite a while.

My Daughter Is (Semi) Famous!

2011-02-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm glad we have such talented neighbors/friends because every once in a while one of us will get to ride on the coattails of their success. Here is one such example:

If you look very closely, you might just recognize the "ghost", none other than our very own Ally. My very talented neighbor, Shaunda, wrote a fun young adult book and needed a dark haired model. We happened to have a spare, dark haired girl at our house and she happened to be available AND she came with her very own wardrobe. I'd say it was a win-win for all involved. (Especially me, since I didn't have to do a thing and I got to read a fun book with my daughter on the cover.) By the way, that is Shaunda's daughter, the lovely Joanna, also on the cover.

This was a fun and enjoyable book to read, though I don't want to give too much away. I do think it was written in such a way that girls AND boys might like it. It was written so descriptively that I actually had a dream (nightmare) that I was in one of the last scenes of the book and I woke up almost exhausted from what happened in my dream. It's not that it's a scary book at all - it isn't, but something that happened is something that would totally panic me in real life. (But we all know that I'm terrified of some normal everyday things - like public speaking. Or doing just about anything in public.)

Anyway, my thanks to Shaunda, who also has written and published other things - most notably The Book Lover's Cookbook. It's a fun book that has excerpts from many well known books along with recipes either from foods in the book or inspired by passages in the book. She even got some of the recipes from the authors themselves, like Roald Dahl.

This book is now available in print (on Amazon) and also on Kindle, for all your progressive young readers.

Crickets

2011-02-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

The girls won't allow me to talk about them too much online these days, but I think I am still allowed to talk about the past when what they did was usually still cute and funny and not "embarrassing". So, here goes:

One year at the Nibley City Heritage Days celebration our friend's son, Daniel, caught a little frog in the park. My girls were about 4 and 7 at the time. They begged him to give them the frog, which he did, and we happily took him (or her) home. Even I was pretty happy with the frog. We named her (or him) Lily.

Well, the next day I started worrying about what we should feed our new pet. I bought her a little plastic terrarium and we got her environment as close to the one she had come from as we possibly could. I then called the pet store to see what kind of "frog food" they had.

"You need crickets." the guy said.

"Crickets? You mean you sell dried cricket parts?"

"No, they will only eat LIVE crickets."

"Live crickets? You have got to be kidding me." I replied.

"Oh no. We get them in regularly. You just need to pick them up every week or so and they'll stay alive until your frog eats them all."

Well, being the responsible pet owner that I am, I drove on into the pet store for my first bag of crickets. I purchased about 15 or 20 of them and we headed for home with Ally holding the bag on her lap in the back seat. At that time we were juggling between 2-3 different vehicles for some reason and I remember EXACTLY which car we were in, my mother-in-law's old (to her - "fancy" to us) Buick that was a nice silvery blue color. As embarrassing as it was to be seen in the "old lady" car, it was a pretty smooth and comfy ride. Probably the most "luxury" car I've ever driven.

The image of what happened next is permanently embedded in my brain.

I was driving along happily, contemplating the "Mother of the Year" award I would receive someday when blood curdling screams from the back seat assaulted my ears. Since I was driving I didn't immediately turn around to see what the problem was. Pretty soon I didn't need to turn around, I saw them.

Lots of them.

Crickets.

Lots and lots of crickets, jumping ALL over the car. Ally was deathly afraid of bugs back then (she still screams like that whenever she sees a spider and I swear that girl can spot a baby spider from about a mile away) and she was terrified. Somehow the elastic or twist tie or whatever it was that was supposed to be holding the plastic bag shut had come off. And they were jumping. All. over. the. car.

I could barely drive, it was like we had our own little plague going on right there inside the car, it was wild! (And hard to concentrate on driving I might add. Good thing I wasn't more freaked out by the crickets themselves or I might have crashed or something.)

We managed to make it all the way home, about a 20 minute drive, and I hurried to catch as many crickets as I could - which was only about 4 or 5. We fed them to Lily that day and the next one and then I convinced the girls that we needed to turn Lily loose where Daniel had found her "because she missed her mommy". There was no way in heck I was going to to through that again. The crickets were pretty expensive too, around $5 if I remember right.

I was pretty sad to let her go, because Lily was a pretty fun pet while it (he, she?) lasted.

Back to the Buick, that car is the same vehicle that we took to Nebraska one year where we caught fireflies and THEY somehow got out and as we drove along at night you could see one light up in the car every once in a while. We did get a few of them home where we promptly released them. They hung around and lived for about a week. Hal swears that about exactly a year later he saw them again one night. Maybe some of the other neighbors happened to bring some back from somewhere else, who knows.

A Quick Peek At The Girls' Rooms

2011-02-16T12:25:00.000-08:00

Since things are a little dreary around here, I thought I'd let you peek into the girls' rooms. I love the bright colors there, and I think both rooms turned out really fun.

Disclaimer: Both these photos were taken shortly after we moved in, when it was still fun for them to keep their rooms clean and school and real life hadn't started back up yet.

Here's Ally's room. We added the beadboard and I think it makes it look kind of fun and beachy, which is what she was going for. This aqua paint is BY FAR the paint that gave me the most stress. The first color was even more "in your face" than this one, if you can imagine it. Even this color kind of glows in the dark. But, she is happy with it so I guess that's mainly what counts. I do like the green that she chose as the accent color. I've also promised her that we can get rid of the Hello Kitty pictures in the frame as soon as we find something that is more "her" at this point in her life. I like the hanging Japanese lantern balls. We had some in her old room but I guessed at the size and ordered the wrong ones. I wish they were bigger.

Here's Morgan's room. Her bedspread was definitely the most expensive one in the house (like three times the cost of mine). But, it was the only one she really loved and I hated the first one she picked out so it was worth it to me. I love how her paint color turned out. We added the board and batten in this room. It was pretty much the same as in her old room. She got the Japanese lantern ball things too, and I wonder if it looks weird, since their rooms are right next to each other. Oh well. I do love her orange pillow. I found out there is a Home Goods store in the Salt Lake area so I made a special trip there and I think it was worth it just for this one pillow. I think I'm going to have to head back there again this summer. We were going to paint the pink tray she uses as a nightstand but we haven't gotten around to it yet. Also, she made a cute bulletin board that has her room colors plus pink in it, so we may just leave it.

Well that's it. Have a bright, cheery day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-16T10:54:00.001-08:00

Hey, I got roses! I don't usually get roses for Valentine's Day, so it was kind of a big deal. (Austin made the cute decoration in school.)

I don't generally love our white mantel, because it's a little too formal for me, but it matched everything else quite nicely for this month's decorations.

Over the kids photos is my favorite quote, because it's so true. Also my favorite photo of each of the kids. I thought the mantel needed something else, so I made the banner the day Hal took the kids to his mom's when I had bronchitis. I was supposed to be resting but I thought I'd "hurry" and make it. A full three hours later I was done. At least next time I make one (I'm thinking a "summer" one would be really fun) it shouldn't take so long, right?

Hope you had a great day too!

Blessings In Disguise

2011-02-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

You know sometimes things happen that have a pretty big impact on us at the time but then for one reason or another we might forget about them. This is something that I haven't thought about in literally years, but then a talk I read this morning reminded me of it. I thought I'd better write it down now, before I forget again, because it made such an impression on me at the time and at least for a little while afterward.

I went out one day to see my friend Patty, who worked at a scrapbook store in North Logan that was owned by her mother-in-law. Somehow I missed Patty and she had already gone home, so I bought what I had gone in for and got ready to leave and finish up the last of my errands as quickly as possible.

As I was walking out I asked her mother-in-law a quick question, just to be polite. Well, either she is a talker by nature (like my mother-in-law) or was lonely, because she didn't give me a quick answer, she just went on and on.

Now, to be honest, I am not much of a "shoot the breeze" type of person. I'm not fond of small talk or filling up space and time with non-essential words. That said, if you see me in person and I talk to you for quite a while it means that either A - I enjoy talking to you as a person more than I enjoy talking to the average person, or B - I am putting off doing something else that I really don't want to do. Or, thinking back on this particular day, C - that I get trapped into talking to you and don't know how to end the conversation.

Anyway, I must have stood there a good 20 minutes trying to figure out how to gracefully exit the premises to get on my way. I think it might have been a school day, so I probably needed to get home before the girls got out of school and I wanted to enjoy those few minutes of peace and quiet that I would have to myself before they came home.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I was able to get on my way. I jumped into my car to do a last quick errand before heading home. I pulled onto the highway and headed toward Smithfield.

Less than a block later I realized that things were not looking good traffic-wise. Cars were backed up pretty tight, with nowhere at all to pull off or turn around. I was not happy.

We crawled along for quite a while, taking at least 20 minutes to get to the site of the accident, only a couple blocks away. I was surprised to see that it was very recent and that emergency vehicles were just then arriving on the scene.

Again, I was frustrated at the amount of time I had wasted, both in talking to Patty's mother-in-law and then waiting all that time to get up to and past the accident. I thought about it all the way up to Smithfield and all the way home. I kept thinking how annoyed I was that I wouldn't get my free time and how inconvenienced I was.

Well, luckily something started turning around in my head and I started thinking how inconvenienced the poor people in the accident were. It looked pretty bad, not just a little fender bender, and with the amount of emergency personnel and multiple ambulances that showed up I'm pretty sure the injuries were extensive. One thought led to another and then it dawned on me.

I was truly blessed that day. When I started adding up the timeline of everything, I realized that had I not been talking to Betty (Patty's mother-in-law) for that extra 20 minutes, I might very possibly have been one of the vehicles IN the accident.

I'm not one to think too much about guardian angels or even believe that I have any - at least not specific ones like some people do, but I feel pretty certain that I was saved from something pretty awful that day. I don't know why, but I really do feel that if I hadn't been detained that extra time, things would have turned out very differently for me that day.

For that inconvenient delay, I am truly grateful.

Embarrassing Conversation #697

2011-02-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

The following is a true story. I'd like to try and change the names (okay, only MY name) to protect the innocent but as you will see, I did that and it didn't work out so well.

I was sitting in Relief Society on Sunday, a little freaked out about leading the music since it's not something I usually do.

As I was sitting there contemplating all that could go wrong, I realized that a new neighbor that I hadn't met was sitting right behind me. Austin is particularly excited because they have a little girl who is in his class at school.

I turned around to her and said, "Hi, I'm Austin Fronk."

Something in my head didn't click quite right, so when I realized my mistake I said, "Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm not Austin Fronk, I'm Morgan Fronk." (I'm not sure why Morgan's name came up at that time.)

I think I started physically shaking my head once I realized THAT mistake so I tried one last time.

"No, I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that, Austin Fronk is my daughter. He's in your daughter's class at school."

At that point my friend Lisa, who was also sitting behind me, started laughing and said, "Austin isn't your daughter, he's your son."

After that I don't really even know where the conversation went but hopefully the treats that Austin and I am taking them tonight will help with the situation.

Long vacation needed? I think we can all agree on that. (Or some very strong medication.)

The Next Day .....

2011-02-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

So we got yesterday out of the way and with all the stress about the paperwork, final details, etc., on the house - plus extended family stress that I don't even want to go into (though I was dealing with it off and on all day and it finally came to a head right before dinner time), I ended up with a lousy migraine.

I hate migraines because they make me practically worthless for 2 days. Today I have the "hangover" feeling and still the tail end of a headache. (And no, I've never had a hangover in real life, though this is what I would think it would feel like. Weak and lousy feeling, sick to my stomach, etc.)

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to bounce back because I'm supposed to go put together some new bookshelves for my mom.

One last note:

We have one side of our fridge that can be seen (very obviously) from the front door.

I've been meaning to make a little chalkboard to put there to put quotes, notes for the kids, etc. on. It will probably be a while before I can get around to making what I am picturing in my head (and figuring out how to attach it to the fridge), but after some of the things that happened yesterday, I felt like I needed to put SOMETHING up there, especially something that our family needs right now. A little reminder of how we want to be.

The reason I think this is timely is because lately I've run into people who seem so short fused and, well, grumpy. Okay, to be honest, we've all had pretty short tempers here at home too. We've had a lot of big, important and stressful things going on. One thing that happens pretty often is that we ALL will seem to have had a bad day and somebody will snap at somebody else when a kind word would go so much further (farther?). We are all so wrapped up in our own problems that we are not thinking of the other family members and trying to help them in their own struggles. So, at least temporarily, I just printed this out and stuck it on the fridge. Don't you think it's a good quote?

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Plato

(I kicked around the idea of just sticking it on a particular child's bedroom door, but then I realized that that might directly conflict with the message that is conveyed here.)

Bronchitis

2011-01-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

I now have a name for it.

I've never had bronchitis before and, to be honest, if you asked me what it feels like or what the symptoms are or what the cough sounds like I don't think I could even tell you. I just knew it wasn't pneumonia or a sinus infection, just a bad cold that kept changing and getting worse and a cough that wouldn't go away for almost 3 weeks.

So, after a trip to the doctor, medicine that is finally starting to help after 5 days and a steroid breathing treatment that I finally started today and think I did wrong, I think I may start to feel better tomorrow.

I hope. (At least the cough is getting a little better, though my ears still hurt.)

Anyway, in other news:

I am standing by for the phone call to go sign the papers to FINALLY relinquish the ownership of our other house from us to the new buyers. (I met them last week. They are young and cute and seem like they will be nice neighbors. Whew!) We've all been basically sitting around waiting since last Thursday. Stupid banks and their dumb paperwork. Why does it take so long anyway? I really wanted to tell them to just go ahead and start moving stuff in over the weekend, though I guess technically that would be a bad idea. Or illegal. I can't remember which thing the realtors said it was, but I guess we can keep following the rules and play nice.

Even if we think the rules are stupid.

The end.

Side Effects That Can Happen When You Have A Bad Cold/Cough:

2011-01-26T17:34:00.000-08:00

I've caught Austin's cold. Not the sinus infection part, mine has been more in my chest/lungs and throat (oh, and ears too). I've also lost my voice off and on for the last week. My kids haven't been too sad about that part.

This cold has been paired with an especially brutal cough. The kind that makes you cough so hard that it hurts and also annoys pretty much everyone in the same room, plus the next two rooms over.

Here are some of the bad side effects of coughing really hard, listed in the order in which I noticed them:

1. You can get a really bad headache. More than once (a day) I've worried about the risk of stroke or aneurysm happening as a direct result of my cough, that's how bad it's been. Along with my antibiotics, I am now taking low-dose aspirin religiously, along with any migraine meds that may be necessary at the time.

2. You can feel like you have given yourself a hernia. Or a double hernia.

3. You can feel like you have cracked a rib (or two, or three).

4. You can feel like you have constant heartburn in your throat from the constant, raspy coughing.

5. It can keep you awake all night, which causes other issues, which are not fun.

6. At night in bed, while you can't sleep, if you turn your head sideways while coughing, you can feel like you cracked your larynx, which is not to be confused with your coccyx, which I actually did break when one of my children was born. It took almost a whole year to mend on its own. Just thought you might like to know that, in case you ever break your own coccyx.

7. You can feel like your lungs are burning so badly it feels like they are on fire and one of them might seriously rupture. (Don't you like my use medical terminology? I'm glad all those medical shows I like to watch are paying off somewhere.)

8. You can get a really bad headache along WITH any/all of the above, which actually happened today.

9. I won't talk about the mucous. You're welcome.

Another strange thing that has happened with this crazy cold is that last week, of course on the day I made the best chicken soup ever - despite feeling really lousy, I lost both my sense of taste and smell. It is not fun. I literally forget to eat or just don't feel like eating. I also forget to fix food for my family, which they have not been too thrilled about.

Even worse, my sense of smell is coming back, but I can only smell things which give me a severe headache, like certain lotions my girls have, some candles, the smell of something in the automotive department at WalMart, etc. Most of the 5 or 6 things I can smell now make me literally sick to my stomach. Doesn't that sound fun?

Ok, I'll stop whining now. Just thought I'd check in before I go take another migraine pill.

So remember, wash your hands! You do not want to get this from me or anyone else. Believe me, I really am trying to stay home as much as possible.

Awkward Family Situation #537

2011-01-24T08:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's no secret, Austin is obsessed with Harry Potter.

My mom, out of the goodness of her heart, bought him a Harry Potter shirt - he's never, ever had one - at Hot Topic, because they were going out of business and the shirt was dirt cheap. It was also kind of in his favorite color, kind of an orangish red.

She was excited to give it to him. He was excited to receive it.

The problem?

She brought it over (and she did warn me ahead of time that it was "a little big"), he put it on and then came the part where I didn't know what to do......

It is OBVIOUSLY a WOMAN'S t-shirt. It has a girly neckline and an hourglass shape and slinky-ish fabric. Luckily, since it has short sleeves, we have talked him into only wearing it for pajamas, but come spring it may have to disappear.

(Did I mention, it is OBVIOUSLY a woman's shirt?)

We did finally try to tell Austin it is a woman's shirt, but he will NOT listen. I think I just need to get online and find him a boy's Harry Potter shirt, even if it costs me a lot.

(I don't think I will post a photo, because I don't want it to come back and haunt him when he grows up and is a brilliant politician or something. He might get accused of "cross dressing, even from a young age".)

And really, should I say anything to my mom?

Weird Medical Fact Of The Day:

2011-01-12T13:50:00.000-08:00

.
(I hope you're not eating right now. If so, you may want to read this later.)

Did you know that:

If you get a sinus infection and it gets bad enough, the mucous will start to come out of your EYES?

It's true. It happened to Austin, who will not allow me to post a photo as evidence.

I thought he had a cold, along with pinkeye. I was very relieved to find out from the doctor that it was "only" a sinus infection and that I wasn't going to have to wash virtually everything in my house.

Negotiations

2011-01-12T11:49:00.001-08:00

Well, I am pretty sure we have definitely sold our home.

We haven't signed on the final dotted line yet, though we have signed and initialed many, many papers in the last couple of weeks, each one getting us closer to our common goal, transferring ownership from us to them. So, I guess technically it could still fall through, though I know that we and the (potential) buyers are all very serious about it - not that we have been able to meet them yet. The realtors have done a really good job of keeping us separated, as if they are afraid we will strike up a deal behind their backs and cut them out.

I do like what I know of them so far. A young couple, no kids yet - just like Hal and I were when we first bought the house. (I don't really feel like I can call it "our" house any more. I now think of it as "the" house, or even "their" house. I think that's a good sign.) The first offer was respectful, not the 30 or 40 thousand below asking price that I've heard some buyers are trying to pull. They asked for about ten thousand below asking, with closing costs. We countered back with four thousand below and six thousand in closing costs, keeping into consideration that we would still have to pay for the new furnace and air conditioning unit that will be necessary. After the cold winter we had last year with a furnace that only barely worked, I wouldn't feel good about selling it unless we made it right. I won't even go into how sweltering the last few summers were with a swamp cooler that either was on and leaked, or I kept off. It had to be replaced, no question.

So, we had a deal. Or so we all thought.

Then the appraisal came in.

Fifteen thousand below asking price, eleven thousand LESS than what we had agreed on.

OUCH.

Not only were we upset, they were upset also. They were still willing to pay what we had agreed on, even said they thought it was worth it (according to our realtor). The only problem is that the bank didn't see it that way at all. Not at all. And, to add insult to injury, the appraisal will stay on record, making it impossible for any appraisal to come in higher for 6 months. (Thank you President Obama, for the mess and the new guidelines that made this whole thing possible. None of us had any say over the appraiser. Now the bank orders whoever they want AND it was someone who is not even from around here. He told our realtor he was having trouble finding comps, which is basically where the final numbers came from.)

I am not willing to hang in there for 6 more months. Time to cut our losses and walk away. The stress of keeping two houses is too much, especially with warm weather and two yards to keep up. I don't really love yard work. Hal really likes it, but I thought last summer was going to stretch him to the breaking point with everything else he has going on right now.

I guess we are lucky because, according to our realtor, a lot of buyers walk away if a house doesn't appraise for more than they pay, so they feel like they are getting a good deal.

And, (according to our realtor again) we should take comfort in the fact that all houses are coming in way low these days. The only problem is that we bought the house we are in before all the houses were being appraised way low. Basically we're just out of luck.

So, we were back to the drawing board with the offer. Back and forth on the phone from them to their realtor, to our realtor, and back to each of us; Hal on his cell phone and me at home with a sick kid. I kept saying, "Can't we just sit down with them and hash it out in person?" Of course my realtor refused. She is pretty firm on this "no personal contact" idea. My main concern was that our intentions or the tone of our voices might get lost in translation somewhere down the line as we were trying to respectfully negotiate. I was pretty sure that we all had the same final goal, so I don't really feel that the deal was at stake, which was helpful. My stress level was already pretty high at that point.

So, back and forth it went all day. Negotiating and then renegotiating closing cost percentages, who will fix what, what can wait, etc. The final price was pretty much non-negotiable, it was the appraisal price (thank you again, President Obama). Even our realtor said she wouldn't tell a client to pay over the appraisal price.

But, we signed the final offer this morning. Two things for us to fix and a few more things to move out of the house. The tool shed is a whole different story, but one way or another it will get done.

We will move forward. Work on the remodeling here a little slower. Maybe take a little longer to get this house paid off. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. We are still where we want to be. We're still going to Disneyland as planned in the spring because I booked the tickets right after the first offer was agreed upon and before the appraisal messed everything up (I knew there was a chance things could fall through). Non-refundable tickets. I don't care. My kids haven't had a vacation for 2 years and I promised they would get one when we sold the house - remember, I called it our "vacation home" because as long as we owned it, we were not going to get a vacation. Austin has only been to Disneyland as a baby, so he doesn't remember it. (Of course he wishes it were Harry Potter World, but I keep reminding him he's not tall enough yet for the big ride. That still buys some time.) I'm excited to go and see him experience it for the first time (that he can remember).

(I guess I really have been stressing out about this more than I have consciously felt. My face has broken out in big boils, like I've only seen one other time - when Hal was put in as Bishop and we knew for two weeks before we could tell anyone. Now THAT was stressful. Not a fun secret to keep.)

I'm extremely glad the problems were with the appraisal and not negotiating back and forth with the new people. This way I'm really only annoyed with some anonymous institution and not my new neighbors, so it isn't personal. I am curious about how much their realtor has told them about US. (If he's like our realtor, they probably know nothing, except for our names.) I hope they don't have any negative preconceptions about us because of the trouble we had coming up with a final agreement.

That could make things rather awkward when we show up on their doorstep with cookies and introduce ourselves as their new neighbors.

Pillar of Salt

2011-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like we may have finally sold our home. The feelings are very bittersweet.

I hadn't really missed the other house one bit, hadn't really thought about it at all.

Until I needed to go over there for one reason or another.

I'd just figured that since I like our situation here better I wouldn't look back. I'm not sentimental like my husband or kids. I wonder if it's because I moved so much as a kid. Or the fact that most of my memories of the house I spent the longest time in growing up, and where my parents still live, aren't that great. (Don't get me wrong, I wasn't horribly abused or anything, we were just not a family that spent much time together so, being the only girl in a house full of boys and with parents who were occupied with other things, it was quite lonely most of the time. Thank heavens I knew how to read!)

Actually, now that I think about it, the house we are selling WAS the house that I've spent the longest time in, 19 years. That is more than double the time I spent in my parents' house, I lived there about 8 years.

Anyway, the last few times I've been over to our old house I've just felt a little sad to leave it. I wanted to stay and just look around in every room. There are so many strong memories that were made there. We brought all 4 babies home to that house. One of my babies took his last breaths on my bed in that house, while my husband and I held him. Not the best memory, but I'm so glad we were able to be with him and knew ahead of time that it was inevitable. Some people questioned our decision to bring him home to die, but I'm so glad we did. Our other kids ran, giggling, up and down the hallway between the kitchen and the bedrooms in that house for years. We've planted trees in their honor there. They started their first days of school since 1999 in that house, celebrated their first birthdays, their first missing teeth (the girls anyway, Austin is still waiting), their first baths and many, many more firsts. There was also some heartbreak in that house, many years of infertility treatments and disappointments and other things I'm happy to leave behind (like the memories of putting the play yard set together), but when I am over there I only remember the good times. I think I still like that kitchen better, even though it is a lot smaller than the one here. I miss the one long area of counter space where the kids and I rolled out countless cookies, or Hal made his apple pies and everything just made sense where it would go. Sometimes you really don't know what you will miss until you don't have it. There were a lot of good times in that kitchen.

But, when I'm not there I'm here, and I'm happy. Very happy. And I'm busy, which is good. Busy planning and doing and creating and living the many, many memories that I hope to have in this home.

This week we will be cleaning out the last of our things and getting ready for the new owners to move in. We are fixing up a couple of things. (Did you know that things break almost more easily in a home that is vacant? Who knew you should run the dishwasher once in a while so the seal won't dry out and crack.) We will be taking the last of our books out of the shelves that Hal built himself. We will be bringing them to this house, where we have plans for Hal to build more shelves for our many, many volumes of books. We are looking ahead and getting started on some of the remodeling that we had to wait on for the other house to sell. (I might actually get rid of the racing stripes in my kitchen after all!) We are looking ahead and feeling good. There is most likely new insulation and most definitely new windows in our future. Plus some new brick and some kind of new siding for the outside to make it more our style. A bathroom to repaint and remodel. And so the list goes on. There is a lot to do and it will most likely be stressful, but it will also be fun to see the progress as we make this into OUR home. The hardest thing for me will be to be patient. The numbers didn't come in well at all for our sale, so we will have to move a little slower than we had originally planned.

It will be interesting to see what changes the new owners will make in the other house. After all the work we've done here, I am curious to see what they will do to make it theirs.

Even though I am looking ahead and very satisfied with where we are right now and where we are headed, I have much more empathy for Lot's wife. It's going to be really hard not to look back, especially when you know that you are there for the very last time.

2010

2011-01-05T16:54:00.000-08:00

Last year was the most emotionally exhausting, physically taxing and financially draining year we've had in a long time.

It was also one of the best.

Seriously, how does that even work?

Most years I'm just glad to be done and move on and hope things get better.

This is the first time in a very long time that I can look back and say, "That was a pretty good year." I can finally see some progress toward a couple of my major goals. (And yes, one of my major goals was to get ALL the kids in school all day. Now I can really enjoy them when they come home. And yes again, if you know me well you will know I was itching to get into a better house for our family. We had outgrown the other one about 7 years ago. We moved into it as a starter home with no kids, thinking we'd live there for 2 years and then find something we really liked, with a better floor plan. 19 years later, we finally made the change. Now I finally feel like I'm at home. AND we can all sit comfortably in the family room, which is a big plus.)

With that said, I'm excited to see what 2011 has in store for us here.

Inspiration Please?

2010-12-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

So, every year I bug Hal and the kids about writing a Christmas poem, story or song.

And every year I'm pretty much the only one who comes through with something. It's starting to get embarrassing. In fact, I'm starting to re-think the whole thing. So far I've had no inspiration whatsoever. Maybe it's the stress of trying to keep afloat with both houses and having the big family Christmas Eve party here this year. My mom has pretty much relinquished all hostess duties indefinitely. I'm starting to think I shouldn't let her off the hook so easily.

I really am in a pretty good mood in general, so I don't know what the problem is. Of course, some of my best work is written as a result of less than ideal circumstances. One of my favorites was written during Sacrament meeting, a day or so before Christmas. I'd scrawled it on a little tiny notebook when I should have been listening to the meeting. You can read it here if you're wondering what kind of literary masterpiece I could have possibly created. (Yep, I'm not holding my breath for any Nobel prizes for literature any time soon.)

So, maybe I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop to see what kind of calamities await us this year that I can write about. Ah, the pessimism rears its ugly head once again. Am I one of those people you hear about who can only be happy when they're miserable? Boy I hope not!

Maybe I should just give up on the poetry and write a song. You know, with all my musical talent and all. (Not.)

Well, a stocking just fell off of the front of the mantel and crashed to the ground. You think I can work something up around that?

At least it's a start.

(If I would have been lucky, it would have caught on fire. I bet I could write a really good poem about that.)

Looks Like They Worked Out Their Differences

2010-11-28T21:21:00.001-08:00

Apparently The Children In China Are Not Just Starving...

2010-11-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

So, Nutmeg Jim showed up today. We decided to start decorating for Christmas and he came to see what we were up to. Austin was sooooo excited!

Until he opened the present Nutmeg Jim brought him. Then he promptly burst into tears. He wasn't just sad, he was MAD.

What horrible thing did Nutmeg Jim bring my little adorable child that would cause such a reaction? Underwear? Spiders? Broccoli?

No, Nutmeg Jim had the audacity to bring Austin some flannel sheets, complete with cute little penguins on them. Austin has been stealing my flannel pillow cases for months and begging for a set of sheets of his own since last year. And honestly, between you and me, I thought it was quite an upgrade from the Christmas ornament he usually gets from Nutmeg Jim. (Ally got sheets this year too, which she seemed very satisfied with, and Morgan didn't need sheets so she got a sock monkey hat and key chain.)

After we all recovered from the initial shock of Austin's outburst (and tried quite unsuccessfully to hide our laughter), we asked him what was wrong.

"Sheets are so BORING!" he cried. "I don't want sheets! You can't play with sheets." (Apparently he was expecting some Bakugans, even though I had some he could earn and he was too lazy to do it by learning to tie his shoes or ride a two wheeled bike so we can all go for bike rides together.)

"Besides," he went on, "these aren't new. We already had these." He said he had seen them in the storage room where I had (rather unsuccessfully) hidden them. I patiently explained that Nutmeg Jim must have been using our storage room to store things in too.

"Yeah," Ally said, "that's why they call it a STORAGE room."

Then he got REALLY mad. So mad that it started to make me mad because of how ungrateful he was being.

I had the kids read the note from Nutmeg Jim, which included the usual about keeping their rooms clean and being good because he was going to report back to Santa. This is usually when I have them hold Nutmeg Jim then for a nice, happy picture, but Austin started to punch Nutmeg Jim so we put him up on the tree, out of harms way.

By then I had had enough, so I went to get the sheets and take them back to decide later what I was going to do. But funny thing, Austin was holding the package and trying to open it. I took it away and he started to get upset.

"If you don't want these I'll give them to someone who is cold and will be grateful for them." I said. "Lots of little kids would love to have nice flannel sheets like this."

"I want them!" he said, "I like them. Don't give them to the children in China."

"No you don't want them," I replied, "or you wouldn't have acted like that."

"Yes I do. I like them, I really do!" he said, seeming pretty happy all of a sudden.

So, I told him he needed to apologize to Nutmeg Jim, who was still stuck in the undecorated Christmas tree for his own protection.

Austin picked up Nutmeg Jim, gave him a hug and said "It's okay Nutmeg Jim. I forgive you."

(Later Austin came back and told me he had a warm feeling, so it must be true - forgiveness is a good thing, I guess it doesn't matter if you're the forgiver or the forgivee.)

'Tis the Season

2010-11-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

Well, Austin has already hit his annual holiday brattiness phase with a vengeance. His teacher even commented on it, sending home a note to ask me if something is going on at home. I was hoping his monstrous behavior would be reserved for us, the ones who know how rotten he can act at times, but still love him anyway.

Today he hit a new low. He cut most of the hair off of one side of one of the girls' little Kelly dolls that we found when we were cleaning up the playroom for our guests (who are now delayed by a day because one of their kids threw up last night - let's hope if it's contagious they figure it out BEFORE they head our way!). I keep finding more hair stuffed in various odd places. I supposed he thought he'd break up the evidence to make it look less obvious.

The little doll had survived years of use from both of my girls without a hair on her head harmed in any way. Austin had access to her for roughly 14 hours and she looks like she's been attacked by wild savages. Not exactly the look I was hoping for when I pictured my cherubic granddaughters enjoying them in a few years. Sheesh!

Anyway, the icing on the cake came when he denied any responsibility, despite the fact that when I asked him where the scissors ended up he showed me right where they were - in the now hair filled drawer.

I reminded him that this morning when he gave our family prayer he asked Heavenly Father to help us not tell lies. (We have been discussing this at length lately and for good reason.)

Austin looked at me and with a straight face answered back, "Well mom, you know sometimes [when you ask Heavenly Father for something] the answer is no."

Productivity 101

2010-11-24T08:12:00.000-08:00

The guests are on their way. There is food to be cooked and baked. A guest room to freshen up. A playroom floor to dig out from under all the miscellaneous toys that are intermixed with each other (and ideally sorted into categories).

Etc., etc., etc......

So, what did I spend my time doing?

Yes, I re-folded and color coordinated my sweaters. You wanna make something of it?

I feel much better now.

(Except for the fact that I still need to cook and clean and.....YIKES!)

Next up, getting rid of those cardboard boxes on the top shelves of our closet. Maybe Christmas Eve would be a good time for that.

Another College Incident

2010-11-11T12:34:00.000-08:00

I thought I had already written all the embarrassing college stories, but something reminded me of this one today.

A few friends and I used to study at a certain spot of the USU library most days. We would study and visit and of course, since it was college, try to meet new people. (By the way, did you ever notice that people you barely knew in high school suddenly became your best friends in college because I think we were all just so happy to see a familiar face? Okay, back to the story now...)

One day I was sitting with some of the regulars and someone had brought Oreos. Though they are not my favorite, I ate a few (just to be sociable, I'm sure). We then got back to studying, visiting, whatever we were doing.

Later on, someone else came by - a boy I was somewhat interested in. I visited with him a little, flashing what I thought was a cute smile every once in a while.

It seemed like he left pretty abruptly, and it wasn't until later that either someone told me or I looked in the mirror and saw what he saw; lots and lots of little Oreo pieces were still stuck in my teeth. It looked like what people do to their teeth for Halloween, though it was nowhere near the holidays, I can assure you.

Let's just say he didn't ever ask me out.

(Ooh, that reminds me of another story that I would prefer not to print. A girl's gotta have some secrets, right?)

Happy, Happy, Beautiful Fall!

2010-11-08T09:50:00.001-08:00

Okay, so it's really raining cats and dogs today, but I've been meaning to post this for some time. It has truly been a most spectacular autumn this year.

Now look closely at the photo below. Click on it to make it bigger and see if you can see a cute little face peeking out the window on the right side.

If you could hear what he's saying, you would hear, "Mom, let me out! I need to go catch the bus!" Yes, he actually likes school. Another big reason I really, really love fall.

And in other news: We just found a mouse, minus the guts on our welcome mat. You would think that would upset me, but it actually makes me very, very happy! First of all, the mouse is still outside and not in the house (but don't think it didn't make me check the 81 traps I have hidden all over inside the house). And second, that means our cat is not mad at us any more for moving her around the corner and not letting her into the new house and is back to earning her keep!

The New Hot Ticket Items At Our House

2010-11-07T19:13:00.000-08:00

I got a package in the mail the other day. Check out what was in it! (And yes, I know my photography skills are quite lacking. Just get over it and click on the photos if you want to see more detail.)

(The quote on the front of the Jesus medallion says "I am with you always" and on the back is the scripture from John 8:12. "I am the light of the world: He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." The back of the Logan Temple medallion says "Establish A House of Prayer, Fasting, Faith, Learning, Glory, Order & God")

A friend of mine from high school and his wife have just started a new business called Cherished Emblems. They are faith based medallions and are pretty nifty. They are really heavy duty and high quality. They are about 1 3/4" round. There will be more information coming up on their website, cherishedemblems.com, this weekend and they also have a facebook page "Cherished Emblems" that shows photos of some of the other medallions. (Actual photos by an actual professional medallion photographer. I took about 30 shots and still couldn't do them justice. So trust me and look them up on facebook. You'll be glad you did.) I love the Beehive one.

(Okay, I just found some official photos of the medallions. The one of Christ comes in gold and silver.)

If you're in the Cache Valley area, they are going to debut the medallions at the Logan Gift Show this coming Friday and Saturday (Booth #30). I have some 2 for 1 entry passes if anyone wants one. Just e-mail me or leave a comment here. (Or call me if you are old fashioned and have my phone number.) I've got 3 or 4 passes left that I'd be happy to give out so they get used so PLEASE ask if you want one. There are also 2 for 1 passes in the Hometown Values booklet that came in the mail for this month.

Anyway, Austin in particular has been enthralled with the medallions. He wanted the one with the Temple to be his and keep it in his room. I'll probably humor him eventually, but for now they are on the display area in my entry way. I keep trading off which one sits in the wooden base, and also which side sits out. I happen to really like what is on the back of each one just as well as the front.

It's funny, because when I heard what the company was selling, I pictured buying them for older people but, like I said, Austin has been all over them. He has tried to take the Jesus medallion to school in his pocket so he'd have a good day and he has also been sleeping with it under his pillow so he wouldn't have any more bad dreams. The other night he crawled into bed with me (after he'd wet his own bed) and when I woke up in the morning I found the Jesus medallion under MY pillow!

Austin truly believes in the powers of the medallion. I know this because he has been learning to ride a two wheeler and one day after practicing on the bike I let him go over to his friend's house. As I dropped him off at the door he ran back and handed me the medallion. He had it in his pocket to help him not be so afraid to ride the bike and to protect him so he wouldn't get hurt. I thought it was kind of sweet. His friend's mom said, "Is that a big Jesus coin he just handed you?" with a bit of surprise, so I had to explain what was going on.

I think this may be the new thing we hide in each others' rooms, backpacks, underwear drawers, etc. The David Archuleta picture may have been replaced by the Jesus medallion.

Favorite Photo Friday!

2010-11-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

A quick photo of our little Harry Potter before we went out Trick-or-Treating and got soaked to the skin.

Our New Kid Bathroom

2010-11-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

Long story short: New laptop = PHOTOS on the blog again! Yay!

So, here's the first installment of the remodel of our new home, the kids' bathroom.

Here's a photo of what it looked like before:

(The paint was kind of a light pink and the linoleum was gray and pink. I'm glad one of my friends really liked the shower curtain, so it went to a good home.)

Now, onto the new bathroom. First a little background. I told the kids (especially since Morgan wasn't 100 percent thrilled about the idea of moving) that they could pick out the shower curtain for their new bathroom. When they picked this one I was the one that wasn't thrilled. I told them we'd wait and look around a little more. When they didn't find anything they liked better I went to Target and bought this one and 2 others, hoping they would get confused and pick a different one. But, they didn't, so this is the one we went with. It was a while before I could walk into their bathroom without humming the theme from the circus. Now I like it just fine.

Here it is:

We had our carpenter put board and batten on the walls and we got new tile. We also re-did the cultured marble trim, changing it from mauve to white, and changed out the hardware on the vanity. (I found a really good, inexpensive source on e-bay. It cost about $100 to do the bathroom, whole kitchen and linen closet in the hallway.) We debated for quite a while over what color to paint the top, but this is what we ended up with. I'm happy with it and Hal really likes it, which is a plus. Austin won out and got his orange bathmats. (I won out because they were $6 on clearance for both of them.)

Here is my favorite part of the bathroom. Whenever anyone comes to look at the house I make them step into the bathroom and shut the door so they can see it.

Each kid has their own colored towel(s) on their own hooks. I love this because there is no spreading of boy germs to the girls and vice versa.

I really wanted to frame out the mirror too, but since we were in such a time crunch to get it done to move in, I had to wait - thinking Hal and I can do it later. Only problem is that the top rail for the board and batten runs right into the front of the mirror, so we'll have to do some creative cutting later. I think we'll start with the easy mirror downstairs when we work on that bathroom in the spring.

Well, that's the grand tour. It's a little bit of a cozy (small) bathroom but it'll do for now.

A Recent Conversation With Austin (After A Lot Of Rambling)

2010-10-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Hello.

Yes, it has been a while. No, nothing out of the ordinary going on, just life. You know what I mean? Nothing more than the usual bad haircuts, home maintenance, family parties, ward parties and kid parties at the house. Cooking and cleaning, family stuff, extended family "stuff", etc. Oh, and we have mice.

And, honestly, fall IS my favorite time of year. I'm really glad it's fall because with everything going on here, I might tend to get a little depressed. I've really been trying to enjoy the little things. And the not so little things. We really are enjoying our new home. It has made a world of difference in our family dynamic to have a floor plan that works for us. (And a fireplace that works when you hit a switch isn't so bad, either.)

So now, two haircuts (within two weeks of each other, don't ask), EIGHT mice (yes, one more and I'm calling in a professional) and almost a month later, I'm back.

Oh yes, I think I found a way to start posting photos again. Our main computer won't recognize my digital camera and the laptop is long gone. BUT, I just realized I might be able to get things to work by putting the memory card in the old digital camera and download that way.

Oh and p.s., no luck yet on selling our other house. Only I would try to sell a house during "the worst market in our lifetimes".

So, even though life has gotten even crazier than usual - if that's even possible, my kids have not had any shortage of amusing things to say. Here's one. (Some of the things Ally says are NOT fit to print.)

Austin: "Mom, why don't you love me?"
Me: "Of course I love you. Why would you even say that?"
Austin: "Because you never change my sheets."
Me: "I do change your sheets. I just keep putting the same ones on your bed because I thought they were your favorites."
Austin: "Oh, well they still need to be changed."
Me: "Okay, why do they need to be changed?"
Austin: "Because I wet them about 100 times."

And, by the look of things on the mattress pad, he was telling the truth. It did NOT look like that the last time I changed his sheets.

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

And Last Years....

2010-10-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Rule Number One: Know Your Audience

2010-10-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

Rats.

I was just getting ready to wax philosophical in a very splendid post, if I do say so myself.

But then I remembered that the person who inspired such wisdom might likely be reading this blog.

And they might not appreciate what I was going to say.

(Note: If you aren't related to me in a fraternal sort of way - meaning that you're not one of my brothers- this post was NOT going to be about you. You're safe. If you ARE one of my many brothers and you're worried that it might be about you, just shape up and then you'll have nothing to fear in the future.)

Question Of The Day

2010-09-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

Why am I wearing full length boots, even with my pajamas on?

Answer: BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO MICE IN MY HOUSE!

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

The End.

In Honor Of Sunday....

2010-09-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we had Hal's sister Jayne's family over for dinner and to hang out for a while. We had a great time with them.

Jayne didn't quite believe that there was not one good family photo that didn't have either Austin looking mad or someone else doing the wrong thing. So, I showed her the photos to prove that I was right. (Sometimes I like proving that I'm right, but not necessarily in this case.)

After looking through all 151 images, she pretty much had to agree with me.

After she laughed a while at our expense.

But, to redeem herself, she came up with a pretty good title for this next photo. From now on, it will be referred to as "Lot's Wife".

Cosmic Payback

2010-09-17T12:12:00.001-07:00

Okay, so the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. At least not in my family (in some ways, anyway - and usually it's not the good ways.)

We had some family photos taken on Wednesday, which was actually the night after I had set my last blog post to publish later in the week. The reason I did this is because I usually can't ever get around to Favorite Photo Friday on a Friday and if I have a photo earlier in the week and I try to save it, I usually forget to post it the next Friday. (So basically what I am trying to say is that these were taken AFTER I posted the photo of me from our family reunion. I had no idea it would turn out to be so ironic.)

So, we were scheduled to do photos and it was difficult to find a time that worked with every ones schedules, including cute Katie, my friend who was gracious enough to take these for us.

I wanted a shot of our family in a cornfield, which reminds me of my childhood in Nebraska.. Unfortunately, it didn't really work out because of the light at that time of day. The girls had a volleyball game later, so we were supposed to be done by 6:00 and we didn't get started until about 5:20 because Hal was running late/forgot (or maybe both). And, as usual, everyone was pretty GRUMPY and mad at ME because they hate having photos taken. It's hard, even for me, to look happy when you are ready to thump on a few people who are in the picture with you.

And then there's Austin. He has been TERRIBLE at looking at the camera lately anyway. He either looks away or closes his eyes. How do you explain to a first grader that if you don't cooperate THIS time, there will have to be a NEXT time. And it won't be any more pleasant either. In fact, probably less so.

Some of these are pretty great shots, I just don't think they are ready to be hung on our living room wall, as I had hoped. The reason we had these taken is because my mother-in-law wanted new photos of all her kids and their families in specific frames that she gave us. I know I can deal with it, but somehow I don't think she'll be so pleased at what she's going to end up with.

What do you think? (And again, feel free to click on any photo to make it bigger.)

Ally held herself in check until the very end, but Morgan seemed to hold it all together pretty well on camera. Inside, I was FUMING!

Now don't you feel better about your own family?

Favorite Photo Friday!

2010-09-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Where's Waldo?

See if you can pick me out in this photo. Click on it to make it bigger if you need to.

This is from a family reunion in the late 70s, with all the relatives on my dad's side. (Except for my brother Russ, who I can only guess must have been the one taking the photo. That's the only explanation I can think of for him not being in it. He would have been too young to be doing anything else important.)

I found this photo a while ago and was always going to post it here, but just didn't get around to it. It is photographic proof that I have always had the same personality, even when I was a kid.

(Yep, that's me. Far right, second from the bottom. The one with the attitude.)

Can You Keep A Secret?

2010-09-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

I'M GOING TO ITALY!!!

Yes, it's true.

Off and on over the years my mom has watched my kids as I've gone out of town for different things. She's made me promise that when my youngest kid was in school all day that I'd go on a trip with her. Well, he's in 1st grade and we are going on a trip to Italy for 8 days. (10 if you count travel time.) I've never been on an actual organized tour like this before. It is a relief to have someone else worry about all the logistics. A big relief, actually. Especially for a country where I don't speak the language AT ALL, except for a couple of words. (Last time I was there I kept accidentally saying "gracias" instead of "grazie". (I actually don't speak Spanish either.)

We leave in about 2 weeks. I am so excited!

My mom and I are quite opposite in a lot of ways so it should be "interesting". I'm sure I'll have lots to talk about (vent) when I get back. She most likely will too, but since she doesn't have a blog, or even a computer for that matter, I can write whatever I want for now.

Here's a little taste of what I'll be dealing with. We went to the meeting for our tour group last night. One of the tour guides is Keri Evans, the wife of Richard Paul Evans, and it was at her house (which is VERY beautiful, I loved it). The other guide is Alicia Richmond from Chic on a Shoestring and Good Things Utah. I've already warned Keri about my mom's freakish obsession. Every little town they talked about that we are going to, my mom kept asking "Is that one of the towns they filmed New Moon in?"

Yes, I can now say "embarrassing" in both English AND Italian.

(Keri isn't much of a Twilight fan either. I'm not sure about Alicia. I think you know by now how I feel about the whole thing.)

Oh, here's another funny, somewhat related story:

Years ago my brother was married to a fun, though somewhat "blond" girl who was a travel agent. I loved having her as a sister-in-law and was quite sad when they divorced, though they did not seem to be the best match for each other.

One day she was booking a trip to France for some women. The front of the brochure had "Oui, oui, oui!" printed all over it. My sister-in-law, who didn't know a bit of French, was reading the brochure to the women. She looked at the front and said, "Oooo-eeeee, oooo-eeee, oooo-eeee. I don't know why that's there, just ignore that part."

I don't think I'll ever let her live that down!

We actually traveled to London and Paris together (which we tried to keep a secret from my brother because they were divorced by then) and had a ball. (We also took her roommate, and I can tell you very definitely that it's easier to travel as two people than with three.)

I was the designated translator in Paris and did pretty well. My proudest moment was when I asked a policeman for directions and he actually understood what I was asking with no problems and I also actually understood what he told us to do and got us to the Metro station safely.

We did have a scary moment on one of the RER trains with a creepy guy about our age who was doing things he shouldn't have been doing to himself and trying to get us to look by hitting our legs with his knee. Ick. I thought he kept accidentally bumping into me so I didn't even look at him because I didn't want to embarrass him. Luckily right at the time we realized what was going on, I jumped up and said that we were on the wrong train so we got off as quickly as we could. One of the girls said "That was quick thinking." And I said. "We really were on the wrong train."

Another fun thing was meeting a Chinese guy at Versailles. Since we didn't know Chinese and he didn't know English, he and I conversed back and forth in French. It was kind of surreal. (I LOVED Versailles. I need to go back with Hal someday. He would just love the gardens.)

One of these days I need to dig out the old photos from that trip. That's when I saw Winged Victory, and for the first time understood how people can feel so emotional about beautiful art.

Okay, so what does any of that have to do with my trip to Italy? Not much, but here's the small similarity:

Yesterday, in the car on the way to the meeting for our trip, my mom was reading the welcome letter that they sent us with our itinerary, etc. As she was reading, she kept saying "See-o."

"See-o?" I started asking. "What are you talking about?"

Finally I realized that she meant "Ciao." She had never seen it in print before. After I corrected her she said she hadn't realized it was Italian.

"Um, yeah mom. It is."

The End

An Un-Quotable Quote

2010-09-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

I took the kids to the fair last month. The weather was not as hot as it usually is in August, it was really mild. I kept telling the kids that in all the years I've gone to the fair - and there are a lot of them, I don't remember any other day that nice.

They each rode a ride and we shared "fair food", including the Texas Tornado drink that cost $6.00 and was mostly ice and fruit rinds, but still tasted really good.

Anyway, Hal is not much of a fan of the fair, or more accurately some of the people who go to the fair. (To be honest, I am more amused than disgusted. I like to watch people, but only if I'm pretty sure they don't know I'm observing them.)

Morgan, in the spirit of the fair, was wearing her new bright yellow Sponge Bob t-shirt that says "Nerd is the Word" (we got it on clearance for $4.00). I'm not a Sponge Bob fan - to be fair, I've never actually sat down and watched an episode of it, so maybe I shouldn't judge something I've never seen.

Anyway, Hal called my phone to see where we were. We were in the big grassy area where they were selling food. He was across the way and immediately spotted Morgan in her bright yellow t-shirt. She had answered the phone because I was busy buying a funnel cake for us to share. Morgan started to laugh, so when she hung up I asked her what was so funny. She said he had said, "Oh there you are, I can see you over there in your white trash t-shirt." We had to try and explain to Austin what this meant, because he got pretty upset.

Apparently we didn't do a good job explaining. That night when I tucked Austin in I asked him what the best part of his day was. I can't remember what he said, but he said the worst part of his day was "when dad called Morgan a white trash can".

An Unfortunate Food Incident (or two)

2010-09-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

One night, when Hal was going to school in Texas, I came home from a LONG day at work. It was about a half hour drive from my work and Hal's school (Baylor University) to our house. All I wanted was a little comfort food.

Of course we were too poor to eat out, so I spent a LONG night in the kitchen making a most delicious lasagna (my favorite). We ate a little of it and I went to bed exhausted.

All night I kept thinking of having lasagna for breakfast, and all the other days of really yummy leftovers.

The next morning I woke up and realized I had left the whole pan of lasagna out on the counter overnight. I can still remember how distraught I felt. I kept thinking of all the ways I could save it, but with meat in it I knew it just wasn't safe.

It just killed me to throw it away!

I have the tendency to get food poisoning even if something is "probably" safe.

(It's happened quite a bit at my mother-in-law's. Once when I was pregnant we had hamburgers there. I saw her grab the buns when she still had raw meat on her hands from forming the patties out of raw ground beef. I skipped the burgers and STILL ended up with food poisoning. Hal had to pull the car over on the way home so I could throw up. Not fun.)

Facebook Photos

2010-08-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

I have a good friend who has a new facebook photo almost every week. How does she do it? She looks beautiful in ALL of them. Of course she IS beautiful, both inside and out, but that's not the point. The point is, HOW does she do that? (Kristi, if you are reading this, I'd really like an answer.)

I'm lucky to have the one decent profile pic that I do have. I think the reason I don't like most pictures of me is because of my hair. Morgan says I am obsessed with hair. (Just because she was telling me about her hurt toe and I absent mindedly cut in with a "Do you think I should change my bangs?", doesn't exactly mean I'm obsessed. Maybe just a little sidetracked. Once I get the hair under control I'll quit thinking about it. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened since 2005. And, unfortunately again, we don't have many photos to document my good hair days.)

Somewhere I saw an interview with the people who started facebook. One thing they said that they thought was interesting is that people always put on the most flattering shot ever taken of them for their profile picture, whether it was recent or a "few" years old. Um..... GUILTY. My photo is from when my son was two and he will start 1st grade this month. And, to be honest, I don't think I ever really did look like that in real life. I keep trying though..... I told Morgan they need save that photo to use for my obituary. (I did think it was pretty amusing hear that in the interview though. I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one who has a picture that is a few years old, and with good reason.)

Really though, wouldn't you rather have people meet you in real life and have them say, "You look so much better in person than you do in your photo."? I'm always afraid people are going away, after seeing me, thinking, "Boy, she looks a lot better in the photo. Not so good in person. She must have been PhotoShopped." So, maybe the strategy should be to post a bad (or at least not real good) photo of yourself so people are pleasantly surprised when they see you at the grocery store on a Saturday with no makeup on and you still look better than your profile picture.

Maybe it's time to stretch myself a little bit and move out of the comfort zone of my familiar facebook photo after all. As soon as I can find my darn camera or get my family to a portrait studio (or a neighbor with a camera phone) I may have to get brave and post an updated photo. I will. Really, I will.

Just as soon as I can grow out this poodle perm. (It's a long story. Some day I may be able to tell it without crying.)

P. S. Now might be a good time to reveal my secret identity. It's another photo from a few years ago, but it might explain a lot:

That's right, folks. Before my son was born, I used to be a Smurf.

Things I Say Far Too Often These Days

2010-07-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

To the almost sixteen year old:

"Brake! Brake!"

"You are the only one who gets my humor around here."

"If you don't want to go to college it's okay with me. You can live with us forever." (She just got a 5 on the A.P. European History test. I'm not proud or anything....)

To the almost 13 - going on 18, year old:

"Get off the phone!"

"Get off the computer!"

"Did you make your bed yet?"

To the almost 6 year old:

"Did you make your bed yet?"

"Aim! Aim!"

"You really do need to take a bath today."

I would really like to retire most of these statements.

Things Are Not Always As They Seem, Part 2

2010-06-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

This is not a continuation from the last installment but another episode that happened to me the other day.

Hal bought some ice cream the other night and Ally, as usual, has worked her way through it pretty handily. Morgan was especially bummed that Ally had eaten most of the chocolate chip ice cream before Morgan had even realize that we had chocolate chip ice cream.

Anyway, the other day I walked to our old house to check my e-mail and get phone messages. I was pretty ticked off because there was lots of chocolate chip ice cream all over the countertop by the computer. First of all, I was mad because that meant that Ally had dished it up at our new house and then walked over to the old house to eat it. Second, I was ticked off because she didn’t have the decency to clean it up off the counter and hide the evidence.

Of course, I hate to let some good chocolate go to waste, so I was about to lick it off the counter when something stopped me. I might have been thinking of the fact that I hadn’t cleaned that countertop myself in well over a week. Also, it did look kind of funny. Plus, I didn’t know how long it had been there. It kind of looked like bird poop, though it was smaller than any bird droppings I’d ever seen. Also, I hadn’t eaten anything else yet that day, even though it was probably well after ten o’clock. If I eat sweet things, especially chocolate, on an empty stomach it’s an instant migraine for me and my blood sugar goes nuts. And last, but not least, I did think that it would be stooping to an all new low to be licking someone else’s leftovers off of the countertop, even if it were clean to begin with. So, no matter what the reason, I didn’t lick it off.

I went upstairs to get the vacuum to take to the other house and when I came down there was a strange dark shadow on the dining room fan.

Upon further inspection I realize that it was a BIRD, right there inside my house. It was one of those really pretty yellow, red and black Western (something or other, I can’t remember the name) birds that are here in the valley right now, but are usually up in the mountains but it has been too cold this year. I have no idea how long it had been in there but I’m sure with all the moving and doors being left open for hours at a time it could have been there for a while, maybe even days.

All of a sudden it dawned on me that it wasn’t chocolate chip ice cream on the countertop. I am SO GLAD I didn’t lick off that countertop. (I was just thinking of the “ick” factor. My dad later reminded me that I could have gotten salmonella or some other disgusing side effect from the bird droppings.)

So anyway, I opened the back door and luckily I knew exactly where a butterfly net was. I went out and got it and tried to gently guide the bird out the door. He flew all around the room, leaving still more evidence to prove that it was indeed NOT chocolate chip ice cream that was on my countertop.

I was finally able to get him out and all was right with the world again for a little bit.

Later that day I was in the house and a bird with a red head was sitting on the outside of one of our big living room windows tapping with his beak, as if he wanted to get in. (Hal later said he saw the same thing happen.) I have no idea if it was the same bird or not, but maybe he told all his friends about how much fun he had making himself at home.

This next story is not really related, though kind of the same idea:

I finally made it to get groceries this afternoon. Grocery shopping is always a nightmare, especially if you need EVERYTHING, plus in the middle of a Saturday afternoon when everyone else seems to be there. Yeah, not my idea of fun.

When I got home Hal and a bunch of our neighbors, ward members, and assorted nieces, nephews and Hal’s brother had all shown up to help move the big pavilion from our old back yard to the new one. I ran out to help and then a couple of hours later I realized that I hadn’t put away one of the big containers of yogurt. I wanted to put it in the front of the other one so it would get eaten up first.

Somehow in the process of juggling both yogurts and various other containers I dropped one of the yogurts and it splatted on the floor and basically exploded.

It just made me sick to see that whole container of yogurt wasted so I grabbed a spoon and started eating the top layer, being careful not to scrape all the way to the floor. (Because at this point, my kitchen floor is NOT fit to eat off of.)

Hal walked in as I was crouched on the floor eating the yogurt off of it. I assured him that yes, I had sunk to a new low and that he was witnessing it. I also told him to just go about his business forget that he had seen anything. He complied and just walked right back out. I’m sure it’s not the craziest thing I’ve done in the last few weeks, not to mention the last 20 years of our lives together.

Oh yes, one more story.

The girls and I came home tonight from cleaning the old house and our new house smelled really strongly of gas. I ran to the stove and one of the burners was set on “light”. (I’ve never had a gas stove before, I’ve always been kind of afraid of them. This is one of the reasons why.)

I had the girls hurry and open all the windows and then we got the heck out of there. Someone must have been leaning against the stove and accidently turned the knob just enough to put it in that position. We had been over at the other house for at least two hours so it had been on for at least that long. Also, it could have been any one of the 25 people who came over today to move the pavilion in the back yard.

It would have kind of ruined my day if we would have blown up our new house, after all the hard work we have put into it.

Have you missed hearing about our exciting lives here?

I’ve missed writing about it.

The End.

Edited to add: A bird flew into our new house the other day too. Austin and his friend left the back door open and a bird flew into our dining room. We had to trap it in a laundry basket to get it out. The girls say it's because I have ceramic birds all over the house.

Things That Are Stressful:

2010-06-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a few things, off the top of my head, and in no particular order, that are stressful:

Buying a house: stressful.

Finding out some of the appliances in your new house don’t work: stressful.

Finding out the hinges on most of the cupboard doors are broken in your new house: stressful.

Selling a house: stressful.

Fixing up a house to sell: stressful.

Getting all the new carpet, air conditioning, tile, etc. (that you always wanted while you actually lived there) put in before you sell the house: stressful and some other adjective that I can’t think of right now.

Remodeling a whole house before you move in: stressful (and smart, I think).

Picking out new paint, moldings, fixtures, hardware, carpet, tile, etc. within a few days: sounds fun, but in reality is pretty stressful.

Putting together light fixtures that were made in China and don’t have the holes drilled in the right place: annoying and stressful.

Packing: stressful.

Moving: stressful.

Having two different doctor appointments for two different kids scheduled for moving day: stressful.

Having the doors open so much from moving that the kids now forget to close them on a regular basis: stressful.

Flies as a result of the doors not being closed on a regular basis: stressful.

Having birds fly into your house: stressful and messy.

Having other people help move your stuff: stressful.

Having everything arranged in your new house and going back to the old one and realizing that you still have over half your stuff there and nowhere to put it: stressful.

Carrying two mortgages: very stressful.

Carrying two mortgages while paying for remodeling and a new washer and dryer (and water softener, which is very necessary here): extremely stressful.

Running out of money, so needing to keep the dark teal kitchen countertop with a white racing stripe and pink laundry room countertop: stressful.

Arguing with the painter about what color to paint your kitchen because the color you have your heart set on clashes quite terribly with your dark teal kitchen countertop with the white racing stripe: stressful.

Driving to your old house to do laundry every day because your new washer and dryer won’t be in for two weeks: stressful.

Showing a house where your cat still lives to people who are allergic to cats: stressful.

Trying to move your cat to a house around the corner: stressful.

Taking care of two yards: stressful.

Picking a phone company: stressful.

Picking an internet provider: stressful.

Picking a t.v. service provider: stressful.

Deciding to bundle: not so stressful.

Deciding who to bundle with: stressful.

Having people come and go to and from both houses at all hours of the day and night: stressful.

Not knowing when to take a shower because you never know when someone will show up: stressful.

Waiting a long time for people to show up (or sometimes not show up): stressful.

Needing to get a pedicure (though I haven’t had a real one in over two years), and not having time: stressful.

Needing to get a haircut and not having time: stressful.

Needing to get a life and not having time: stressful.

Not having a regular routine for meals, etc.: stressful.

Having a husband who works long hours that vary from day to day: stressful.

Having a husband who is on the phone 24/7 so I can’t have an uninterrupted conversation with him: stressful.

Having a husband who is caring for our two yards AND his mom’s yard that is 30 miles away (each one over ½ acre): stressful.

Having a husband who is bishop, while doing all of the above: stressful.

Having a husband who is doing all of the above, when you are trying to remodel a house and need his input to help make some of the decisions: stressful.

Teaching a 15 year old daughter to drive: stressful.

Teaching a 15 year old daughter to drive in a car you really like, that is your first new car in over 15 years: very stressful.

Having a 12 year old daughter who doesn’t like to work: stressful.

Having a 12 year old daughter who acts extremely unpleasant when you are trying to get her to work: stressful.

Having a 12 year old daughter who thinks she’s 18 and should have all the freedom in the world: stressful.

Having a 12 year old daughter who thinks you’re an idiot, and so do her friends: stressful.

Leaving your 12 year old daughter and her 11 year old cousin “in charge” while you take your 15 year old daughter out driving and coming home to find every breakable cup in your house in the back yard full of milk, peanut butter, granola bars and unidentified “potions”, also finding out they had made a volcano and “goop” while you were gone, using all your vinegar, baking soda and cornstarch: stressful.

Having a five year old son who has run wild and basically been an orphan for the last five weeks, so he now thinks it’s normal: stressful.

Having a five year old son who hasn’t taken a bath in over three of those last five weeks: stinky.

Being the designated driver for all your childrens' friends: stressful (where ARE their parents?).

Not eating well because you are too busy: stressful.

Going to the store to buy food, but forgetting to buy actual food and instead come home with more items to decorate your new home: stressful.

Not sleeping well because you are up all night, itching, because you are allergic to something in either your new house or yard: stressful.

Not being able to sleep in the next morning because workers need to show up early to finish up some work: stressful.

Waiting for carpet to be delivered for 3 extra weeks, when everything else is ready for you to move in: stressful.

Having your carpet finally delivered and installed in the pouring rain: stressful and soggy.

Having workers in your home while you are trying to put stuff away: stressful.

Waiting for workers show up when you need to go do other things and run errands (like buy food): stressful.

Still not being able to take a shower because you never know when a worker might drop by to finish something: stressful.

Having your child in summer Driver’s Ed. the week you are trying to move and having to drop everything twice a day to drop her off and pick her up: stressful.

Having your child in the Nibley City play the week you are trying to move: stressful.

Pulling your child out of the Nibley City play because you are too busy and the time conflicts with your other child’s summer Driver’s Ed. Then feeling guilty because they don’t have enough help so you say you will still help, so they give you 12 Indian costumes to unfray the fringe on, which take over 2 hours each: stressful.

Bribing your mom (by mowing her lawn) to help unfray the fringe on Indian costumes while she watches t.v.: brilliant (she had them done in two days, I was done in two hours.).

Also agreeing to help do the Nibley City play blog, even though my child is still not in the play: stressful.

Feeling guilty that I haven’t helped more and am letting people down: stressful.

Having people show up to “help you move” that bring lots of little kids: stressful.

Having people drop in to see your new house, when you still have a million boxes lying around to unpack: stressful.

Showing your neighbor the big drawer for dirty laundry and then realizing your underwear is right on top: embarrassing and stressful.

Having people try to help you unpack: stressful.

Moving a pool table from one basement to another, almost killing my husband in the process: stressful. (I was standing at the bottom of the stairs watching it head down and about crush him. I was literally weighing my options of whether I should jump in to help, with the possibility of having it kill both of us, making my children orphans in the process, or if I should stay away, thus ensuring them at least one parent. As you can tell, I’m still around, though I did talk encouragingly to him from a safe distance.)

Moving a 2000 pound structure from one back yard to another with about 25 people to help: stressful, but satisfying.

Freaking out in front of my neighbor when the girls told me that Hal had told a lady she could come see our old house in one hour, when we had just started moving out and it was a wreck: stressful.

Feeling like you now “owe” at least 100 people who have helped you in one way or another over the last few weeks; moving our things, feeding us, etc: stressful and grateful.

Feeling like I should apologize to at least half of those people for my behavior: stressful.

Helpful people moving our piano, not waiting for Hal to get there to supervise, and having it get lots of scrapes on it and the walls and chips broken out of it in the process: stressful and sad.

Still needing to move our entertainment center that I really like: stressful.

Really needing to go to bed, but feeling like I really want to catch up the blog: stressful.

Still trying to keep our other house presentable to show during all this chaos: stressful.

Deciding which realtor to go with once we list the house when we get our new carpet in: stressful.

Realizing we have ticked off ALL our realtor friends/relatives/neighbors who have come to give us a sales pitch, that we will not hire: stressful.

Dealing with any realtors at all: stressful (no offense intended to anyone who may be a realtor, it just has been really stressful).

Wanting to go to the home show this week and not having time: stressful.

Leaving my five year old with a neighbor, unsupervised (I thought there was an adult there), and finding out that they have gotten into the Otter Pops and gotten the entire kitchen and the new living room carpet sticky: stressful.

Hiding the box of Otter Pops and having my 5 year old and his little friend find the box in the garage and drinking the liquid out of the entire box of Otter Pops: stressful and disgusting.

Realizing that I have a good enough reason to never buy Otter Pops again: liberating.

Waking up on Father’s Day and realizing I’ve forgotten to do anything for either my husband or my father: stressful.

Sluffing Sunday School to just sit down by myself for a few minutes to do nothing: honestly, very relaxing.

Trying to scare up a nice Father’s Day meal and realizing that I still don’t have anything in the house to fix a decent meal with: stressful.

Trying to decide which is worse, making your child wash off the Harry Potter scar tattoo so he can go to church or letting him show up at church with the tattoo and making your husband (the bishop) unhappy: stressful.

Having my son's speech therapist finally call to make a summer appointment and having her insist on the one time my daughter is scheduled to have some suspicious moles removed (I've had melanoma): stressful.

Trying to reschedule, but the phone is here and the calendar is there: stressful.

Driving back and forth for to do laundry because we live in one house, but the washer and dryer are at the other house: stressful.

Catching your son guzzling water out of a 10 year old jug of distilled water that has been in your garage: stressful.

Still not finding my camera and missing lots of great photo ops in the last few weeks: stressful!

Having all of the above happen within a one month time period, give or take a few days: DEATH DEFYING.

Update

2010-06-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Carpet was (finally!) installed all day Friday and Saturday in the pouring rain. It was quite soggy. Not exactly a great beginning, but it is in, just the same.

We moved some stuff late last night and had our first meal there, including running back and forth for all the missing ingredients, pans, etc. It was kind of fun, especially since I can hand Morgan the keys and have her run for me. She is getting a lot of experience driving around the corner and back.

This morning it was not so amusing when Morgan wanted some toast and all the jam had been moved to the new house. It was even less amusing that the second she drove away I realized that there was no milk here for our breakfast and I had no way to contact her over there. I had hoped that she would figure it out and bring the milk anyway, but no such luck. As soon as she got back I jumped into the car, wet hair and all and brought back some milk and butter. (She said SHE didn't need milk for breakfast so she didn't really think about bringing any back.)

The carpet fumes are quite strong so I got a headache this afternoon when we were there because it was pretty cold so we left the windows shut. Hal and I opened them before we came home to air the place out. Seriously, this cold weather in the middle of June is starting to get old, though it's better than being too hot to be moving all our stuff. (But the rain has seriously put a damper on things, pardon the pun.)

It about killed me that today was Sunday, so we couldn't really officially move stuff in today. Tomorrow, in between an orthodontist appointment for one kid and a doctor appointment for another kid, we will be moving in our beds, at least. I can't wait!

I'll wait to post some "after" photos (until after we move in, obviously), but I was going to post some "before" shots and I can't find my camera.

Wish us luck for a productive day tomorrow! Good night.

There Is A Light....

2010-06-10T07:15:00.000-07:00

.
at the end

of the tunnel.

(I think.)

The carpet that was scheduled for May 24th,

and then June 4th,

and then the 8th

is on a truck

headed to Utah.

(So they say.)

So....

we are scheduled for carpet to be installed

on Friday

and Saturday.

And THEN

we can move in.

And THEN

life can move on.

(I hope.)

p.s. living in limbo is not fun.

Expectations

2010-06-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to let go of them.

It's hard.

BUT, I've finally figured something out. Our blue bathroom here helped me do it.

When I first painted our bathroom blue in this house I was upset with the result. It was not the blue I had pictured in my head. It was way brighter, way more "in your face" than I had wanted. I had envisioned a nice, calm, "beachy" blue. Instead I got a bright, happy, almost turquoise blue.

I really wanted to change it but I had painted during Austin's naptimes on the last week of school and school was ending, so I was running out of kid-free blocks of time.

Plus, the kids liked it.

So I kept it "just for now".

Well now, I've realized that I will really miss that bright blue bathroom. Someone told me it looks like a spa. Honestly, it's the closest that I think I'll ever get to a real spa, unless I win a contest, but I can kind of see what they mean. It's kind of soothing, in a bright, cheery sort of way.

Once I released the expectation of what I thought I wanted and accepted what I ended up with, I realized that I liked it.

Same with our new house. The paint colors that I used that I already had here, I am happy with, because they turned out just as I had expected. Some of the others are good and I'm happy with them, but there are a couple that I am not thrilled about. They are just so not what I had expected.

But really, thinking it through rationally, I think it's the same thing. If I can just let go of what I thought I wanted, or what I had pictured, they might turn out to be good colors. They are just darker or brighter than I had expected.

It's hard to let go of expectations, especially for a control freak like me.

I think it's the same with my kids and their personalities.

Once I can let go of the expectations I have for them, and how I think they should turn out (or even the fact that I expect them to turn out somewhat the same as each other), maybe then I can just let them turn into who they really are and accept it and figure out that maybe I really do like these unique little individuals and their different personalities, crazy quirks and all. They just may not be the sweet, docile little children I had pictured in my head before I had children.

Wow, from paint to children. Maybe all the paint fumes have finally gone to my head. That was deep, even for me, don't you think?

Censorship

2010-06-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

I've just decided I'm all for it.

In some cases anyway. Or at least a good filter or editing tool. Kind of like the VCRs that screen out stuff you don't want your kids to see. I'm on the verge of getting one of those too.

Lately I haven't had as much time to read. In fact, I've renewed my current library books no fewer than 5 times. Mostly they are just home idea books, but I haven't had time to even look at some of them because I've been working on the real deal.

The library called last week and told me that two of the books I'd requested for them to order had come in. I was thrilled, though the timing wasn't great. They were autobiographies of Andre Agassi and Craig Ferguson.

I love a good autobiography.

Not a biography, because anyone can say anything they want about somebody else. You still take an autobiography with a grain of salt but at least it's the version of the truth that the person themself wants you to know.

The last autobiography I read before these two was Home, by Julie Andrews. It was good, though somewhat depressing. It was sad how she was raised and the adults in her life, at least her mom and step-father, lived off of the money she brought in. So much, in fact, that she felt fully responsible for the livelihood of her whole family from a really young age and worked herself into the ground on many occasions, even through serious illnesses.

I started the Craig Ferguson autobiography, American on Purpose. And then I stopped. Now I realize that he's Scottish and all, but in the first two chapters he'd used the f-word twice. I decided to shelf the book while I decided whether to continue or not. Really, if I would have thought about it, I should have known it would be like that.

So, on to Agassi's book, Open. It was fascinating. He started out describing a tennis match at the end of his career and what his body had to go through just to get on the court. He really is a good writer. I was hooked, I couldn't put it down.

But then he started describing his childhood and how his father had tormented him and talked to him. F-words all over the place. I tried to cover them with my fingers as I read, but then on some pages I ran out of fingers. The language in his head and out of his mouth was no better during tennis matches. I left the book feeling disappointed and sad for him and his crazy childhood, or lack of it. It actually reminded me of Julie Andrews' childhood, the pressure to make money to support the family.

I don't suppose there is anywhere they have an "edited" version of books, is there? I don't dare go back to Craig Ferguson.

These are stories I really want to read, but I really don't want the garbage left in my head. I wouldn't say I have a photographic memory by any means, but I do know that I can remember things better if I see them. If I needed to study for a test in school I would do a lot better if I would write out what I needed to remember first.

Now I need to go back to a nice, happy, cute book again to rid my head of what was in it last. Any suggestions?

Comfort Food These Days

2010-06-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

I've gone back to one of my old standby comfort foods, Peanut Butter Crunch cereal. Good stuff.

I've even found a hiding place that the kids haven't discovered yet, so this last big box has been totally mine.

There's nothing better to eat at the end of a long day than a nice bowl of Peanut Butter Crunch. Don't tell, but I actually always eat four bowls of it. I fill the first bowl of it and when it's gone there is always a lot of milk left. So, since I hate to waste, I put more cereal in the bowl and eat it up. After that, I realize that I'm still a little hungry, so I fix one more bowl of cereal with fresh milk and, once again, that milk needs to be used up so I pour in more cereal. This is exactly what I get mad at the kids for, but since I paid for the cereal, I figure I'm allowed. Did your mom ever use the line "I won't buy good cereal (or whatever) because you'll just eat it up."? I always thought that was a dumb thing to say, but now that I have kids I know what she meant (although it kills me to admit it).

It has been a stressful month, full of surprises, most of them not good so maybe it's just the routine of sitting down with a bowl of cereal and watching Frasier with Hal after the kids are in bed that is so comforting.

Driving

2010-06-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Morgan is in the middle of summer Driver's Ed. at the school. It has been a little nerve wracking.

I was under the mistaken impression that all kids were like I was and had "borrowed" their parents' - or someone else's - vehicle to practice on by this time. (I did already tell that story, didn't I? It's not pretty. My parents' neighbor still hasn't forgiven me and that was 30 years ago.)

Who knew I would be blessed with such an obedient child? I was literally shocked the first time we went out driving and I realized that she really didn't know what to do because she had never done it before.

We've gone out a few times now and today was the first time on the highway. Even though I'm not Catholic there were a couple of times I almost said a Hail Mary under my breath and crossed myself. I wish we still had our old Blazer back so she could learn in that and have it for her car. It's big enough to keep her safe in case someone else runs into her, which is my biggest fear. She's a good kid and I know she'll be a safe, conscientious driver.

It's just hard watching her learn in MY car.

Our Little Casanova

2010-06-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

Ally had a couple of friends over the other night. One of them said or did something to make him think that she likes Harry Potter almost as much as he does. Now he is smitten.

I drove the girls somewhere and the one in the middle of the backseat had to get out. The other one (the one Austin likes) got back in the car and stayed by the door, opposite Austin.

He gave her a look, patted the seat next to him and said, "You can scoot a little closer."

On the way home, after dropping off all the girls Austin asked me which one of Ally's friends was my favorite. I said I didn't know. Then I asked him which one was HIS favorite.

He said, "Casadie. We have a lot more in common than the others."

Whoever thought a five-year-old could be so romantic?

Our Fitness Plan

2010-05-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

We've had a fitness plan in place for a while now. It actually kills two birds with one stone.

Whenever anyone says the word "crap" - which I think is a pretty ugly word, they have to run around the house three times. Ally seems to be the biggest perpetrator these days, which works out just fine because she seems the most inclined to sit around and watch t.v. or spend time on the computer. I won't tell you who is the second biggest offender. I have enough stress in my life right now to start worrying about what people think of my language.

At one of Ally's recent soccer games she said the offending word twice. To soften the blow of the punishment I offered to run with her. We took off pretty fast. She had a head start so I raced at full speed to catch up with her.

This seemed like a good idea until we raced around the house and ran right into our neighbor, who was standing out front waiting for Hal to get something. I, feeling like I needed to explain what we were doing, started into the whole explanation. Halfway through, it didn't seem like such a great idea. I then muttered something like, "Never mind." and then ran into the back yard again.

I let Ally off the hook for the rest of the laps.
(I may be owing a few more.)

Austin's Words To Live By

2010-05-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

Austin has been very NAUGHTY lately. I can't take him anywhere. I finally got Hal to go to the furniture store and Home Depot and Lowe's with me today to give his opinion on a couple of things before I bought them. Austin was horrible. I think it's the lack of attention he's had these last few weeks.

Anyway, all night tonight he was just rotten and mean. He kept lying on the floor with his tongue hanging out, pretending to be dead and then he kept hitting the pantry door and being obnoxious.

Hal had bought some doughnuts and Austin kept sneaking them and wouldn't eat anything healthy. Then he kept saying he was going to throw up. I was not happy with him.

When it was time to go to bed he was still rolling around on the floor, just being a pill and acting very mean. Finally I gave him a hug and said, "Do you need some attention?"

He answered back, "Mom, remember that famous quote."

"Which famous quote?", I asked.

"The badder you treat your kid, the sicker they get."

Point taken. One way or another he will be getting a lot of personal attention tomorrow. (And I will hide the doughnuts, just to be on the safe side.)

Too Optimistic Too Soon?

2010-05-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

Maybe I was, because I have had nothing but headaches since my last post. Everything is going to take longer, be more complicated, and cost roughly twice as much as anticipated.

No new countertops for this girl any time soon. Instead I have a shiny new water softener. And even it cost more than originally estimated.

My head hurts too much to go into detail, but it doesn't always pay to have "friends" in the business. It especially doesn't pay to have more than one friend in any given specialty. Then they have to compete with each other for certain jobs. Friends don't like it if you don't end up hiring them to do the work. What's really bad is if they both think they are doing the work and you don't know how to tell them they aren't. I am especially traumetized by the carpet "friends" who gave us an outrageously expensive bid on inferior carpet that the other guy said they pay $8/yard for. There's a whole long story, but I don't feel like telling it. And don't even get me started on how many realtors we are related to, friends with, neighbors with, etc. We need to make a decision on that one soon to get the house officially on the market by June. I'm just dreading the reaction of one of the realtors who has campaigned for the job and probably won't get it. I just keep wishing we could find someone on our own, but so far that hasn't worked out so well. I can't get the exposure a realtor can.

I have officially dubbed the kids' bathroom the Rubik's cube. There are so many things that need to be accomplished in such a small space, which is fine. I'm just having a problem figuring out the order of what needs to be done. Tear out pink cultured marble trim and install new, white trim, or paint first? Install new baseboards or board and batten first - or at the same time? (The painter and carpenter talked me out of beadboard in an area that will actually get wet.) Board and batten before painting? No, we need to wait until the trim is up so we can evenly space the boards. Catch 22. And when do we tile? Before the baseboards, of course. Well the tile is backordered so now everything else is on hold!

Let's also not think about all the wallpaper I need to rip down very soon. I need to get the kids over there to let out some of their pent up aggression toward us for making them leave the only home they've ever known. I'm starting to feel it myself. I didn't realize how attached I was to this place. I always figured that as long as we were moving somewhere a little better for our family, I'd be fine. I might have been wrong.

There is something good that has come out of all this. I haven't watched any t.v. or been on facebook all week. Last week I kept wasting a lot of time, just waiting for the second they were done moving out so we could get started.

Need to run for now. The Excedrin is calling my name.........

At least it's cheap. (Relatively speaking, anyway.)

Today

2010-05-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

Today was a really great day.

"Why?", you ask? Well, I'll tell you why.

Because I was able to actually do a few things to get the process of moving rolling along.

The painter got started, handyman got started, I scheduled the water softener fixer, Hal and I went to the flooring store to finalize and order carpet and tile, I had some friends come see both houses, got some things moved out of here and into there, AND, in-between it all, a nice couple came to see our home.

I'm not going to count my chickens by any means, but they are exactly like who I had always pictured will live here after we move out. They are young empty-nesters, who seemed to like and appreciate the library and they asked appropriate questions, which made me feel like they really are interested, not just looking for fun. (And really, they may not be interested, just nice, but it was fun to show them around. They kind of reminded me of my favorite aunt and uncle.) They also noticed details and things we have done here to try and make things nice. So, out of everyone, I hope they end up buying this place. I even got a little choked up while I was talking to the wife about the house and how much we have loved living here. Embarrassing.

Anyway, tomorrow brings more fun; calling the countertop guy to come give me a bid so I will know for sure if I can afford to change the kitchen countertops or not. The pink trim around the bathrooms may get a fresh coat of Krylon paint if I can find out for sure if it will work on cultured marble. If so, it will save me around 400 dollars. That's money I will gladly transfer to the painter.

There's lots to do, but it will be good. I don't mind keeping busy if it's working toward a goal that is so worthwhile.

Well, I'm off. My neighbor wants most or all of the other house carpet, so we are going to try and tear it out and roll it up ourselves.

Wish us luck!

PATIENCE!

2010-05-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning, 6:54 a.m.

Still waiting.

Still not patient.

10:30, still waiting. Getting less patient.

And later:

Walk through was supposed to be done at 12:00 noon. Got a call that it won't be until the end of the week now and that one of the toilets in the new house is leaking. Great.

1:00 p.m., finally in - but so is a lot of their stuff, one whole garage bay (including a tiller or something that is sending the nice gasoline smell through the fancy air exchange system in the house.)

But..... we were able to throw some things, althrough somewhat willy-nilly, into the basement in between Ally's soccer game and my brother's 40 birthday party. Not quite the nice, organized move I had envisioned.

Right now it looks just like home.

But not in the way I had hoped.

Favorite Photo Friday!

2010-05-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Everything today may be jumbled, like my brain is.

Today we officially take over our new house! (I hope.) It was supposed to be May 1st, and then got moved to the 5th. On the 4th I found out the the previous homeowner had told our painter that she should be out by Friday. I'm glad she happened to mention it to me in passing because I had plans to show up on Thursday, guns blazing, to start arranging and putting stuff into my basement. We are re-carpeting and painting the whole upstairs but pretty much leaving the basement as is for now, except for the bathroom. I was going to start setting up the playroom to get most of the toys out of here. I was also going to work on the workout room and the kids' t.v. room. And start ripping wallpapaper off the downstairs bathroom walls. It's in great shape - but it is covered with elk, not quite our style.

AHHHHH, my patience is being tested! She said she should be out by tonight by 6 at the latest. If not, it will be too late for her to drive, and I wouldn't want her to have to drive in the SNOW (which we have still been getting) in the dark, so I may have to wait until tomorrow afternoon.

Patience, patience, patience.

PATIENCE!!!!!

Okay, I'm better now.

I think.

Except for the fact that my camera is also M.I.A. Sheesh. I need to find it, or someone else's to borrow to get all the "before" photos because starting Monday, bright and early, the place will be on its way to the "after" version.

Okay, on to the photos.

Again, because of my missing camera, AND the fact that my computer with all the photos on it is on the fritz, I was going to scan the kids' photos that are on the mantle. Well, I'm too lazy to take them out of the frames (and Austin's is too big) and the quality is not good unless I take them out (I tried it), so I'll just have to show you something else SO cute that I can't stand it. Austin's 5 year old photos. I can't believe I haven't shown any of these before now.

This is the shot that matches the girls' photos at that age the best. It's too bad that instead of looking contemplative he looks mildly ticked off.

In this one he looks reverent and happy. Pretty much opposite of how he actually looks in church. Then it's usually grumpy and bored. Maybe he's happy because he's NOT in church.

I love this one. It's what he looks like most of the time, especially when he's thinking of something happy, like Harry Potter. Actually, he was most likely thinking about Harry Potter while this was being taken.

My brother-in-law likes to call this next one the "author" pose.

"Austin Fronk resides with his family and his pet cat in Utah, where he spends his free time drawing pictures and arguing with his mother about how much computer time is appropriate for a five-year-old. He is never seen without his constant companion, his authentic Harry Potter magic wand. He dislikes going to church and taking baths."

Looks like he better grow up a little before he publishes his first novel.

That's why I haven't written one yet either.

My Favorite Magazine

2010-04-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been drowning in magazines.

My mom cashed in all her frequent flier miles for a bunch of new magazines to try (mainly ones that include anything about Robert Pattinson), including some that she thought I might like. She was pretty right on in some cases. This Old House and Health are two that I enjoy that I had not read before.

The Martha Stewart Living magazine? So not my favorite. Martha makes things too complicated. She also stresses doing things "the right way", which I have neither time nor money (not to mention the lack of patience) for. I also think I'm a little too casual at this point in my life to be a Martha fan.

In the real world, Martha and I would not be friends.

Anyway, the other one that mom got right was this one, Coastal Living.

I had already been getting Coastal Living, so for a few months I was getting duplicates, a concept that my mom didn't quite grasp.

Anyway, I like Cottage Living for the cottagey-beachy style of houses they show. I am a huge fan of beadboard, which shows up in abundance in Cottage Living and will hopefully show up in a few places in our new house. I also kind of like the semi-rustic cabin style, though not too rustic. I'll have to post some examples to show what I mean.

We'll be re-doing our new kitchen soon, hopefully within the next year. We (Hal) decided that we need to live with it a while and see if we want to change more than the superficial things like counter tops and hardware. It is a good idea, so I agreed. (And our nice, though a little outdated, medium-oak kitchen table already matches the nice, though a little outdated, medium-oak cabinetry. Right now a new kitchen table just isn't in the budget.)

Now I don't feel as guilty spending so much money on all the new bedding and towels I've been collecting.

Ahhhh, don't you just love new towels? I do!

Now you won't need to be scared to use our new guest bathroom when you all come and stay with us.

Though not at the same time, of course.

Martha might not approve of how I would handle things if I had too many guests at once.

One Thing I Know For Sure

2010-04-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

Having the flu is not very fun.

Taking care of people who have the flu is no picnic either. (Especially cleaning up the aftermath.)

Doing both at the same time is pretty much physically impossible.

(And that has been our week so far - at least for the last couple of days.)

The End.

We Now Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Chaos.......

2010-04-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling like I've neglected Austin with all this house buying/selling nonsense that has been going on. I don't think he knows it, but I know it.

Actually, I think he rather enjoys it. I've let him have a friend over EVERY SINGLE DAY, except for Friday last week (when we got to go see some other friends), and most days so far this week. In fact he had three little friends over yesterday and it was fine, as long as they stayed outside. The big windstorm and rain put a stop to it though.

Anyway, I found this today while wasting time on the internet (which hopefully I won't do so much of in two weeks, when I can start to slowly move into our new house).

It made me feel rather guilty in a good way, the way that makes you turn off the computer and play a board game with your child, even though you hate board games because they are tedious, take too long and have a million tiny little pieces, which you know the kid won't help you pick up later.

I am going to go play Life, which he has been begging for for quite some time. For some reason, I really dislike this game.

Today I'm going to do my best to pretend to enjoy it.

Or I'll just let him win. Either way, he's happy.

(Later: So we played Life, which was interesting because Austin refused to pay any taxes or responsibilities. I may have a future Ted Kaczynski on my hands. After the game was over, I asked if he wanted to play again. He begged me to invite a friend over instead. I'm fun, aren't I? I'm starting to get an inferiority complex. And there are still a million tiny little game pieces all over my bedroom floor.)

Things Are Not Always As They Seem

2010-04-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Here are two quick examples:

A couple weeks ago I drove the girls to Ogden to go shopping for new bedspreads. On the way through Brigham City, Morgan and I were having a philosophical discussion about why someone famous (allegedly) beat his girlfriend. It got to the point where we were being silly about it so as I was driving I gave her a little pretend punch to the side of her head.

Well, I didn't really think about how it would look to anyone else until the truck behind me started swerving and honking. I was horrified when I realized that he thought I had really hit her.

I couldn't think of any way to let him know we were just kidding, so we did the only thing I could think of: I had her pretend to hit me back. Once. (Just once, so we were even. He couldn't have a problem with that, I figured.)

This was right about the time that we decided that our family needed our own reality show.

(Or maybe a reality check is more what we need.)

And....

Last Saturday Ally had a soccer game. She wasn't quite dressed when we needed to leave so I told her to hurry and get ready and then I would drive Austin's friend home and come back and get her. I also told her to be watching for me when I pulled up (or else).

Well, I dropped off the friend and talked to his mom for a few minutes. I pulled around the corner and was about a half a block away from our house when I saw Ally trotting up the street in her soccer uniform. I thought, "Good, she really was listening and is trying to make things a little easier on me."

And then I saw her go to get into a car that was parked up the street about 100 yards ahead of me. She got all the way up to it and grabbed the door handle. I could not figure out what in the world was going on. I wondered if she thought I wasn't coming back and she had called someone else for a ride or something like that. And I have to admit, I wasn't thrilled.

But, as quickly as she went to get into the car, she got away from the car and started running toward me with a funny look on her face. (Luckily she saw me or she would have had to run clear home.)

It was then that I noticed that the car in front of me was identical to ours.

Now really, what are the odds? In the year and a half we've had this new Pilot, I've only seen one other that is this same dark gray color. Anywhere, even on vacation. Now one just happens to be parked a half a block away from our house? Crazy.

So she jumped into our car, looking more than a little freaked out and as I drove past the other Pilot the guy got out and started taking a little girl out of the back, probably to look at the horses in the pasture they were parked in front of.

I realized then that I was heading the wrong direction for the game, so I turned the car around in the driveway directly across the street from them and rolled my window down to make some comment like "Nice car." but Ally told me to put it back up and just get out of there. I have no idea what that guy thought was going on with us.

It wasn't very funny to Ally at the time, but now it's hilariously funny to me.

I thought I was the only person stuff like this happened to.

I wonder if it's hereditary.

Favorite Photo Friday

2010-04-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know, this is not a photo, but it is a new favorite of mine. It's a portrait of my father-in-law, who passed away last August. I just love it, it really captures his "essence", right down to his left eye squinting a little more than the right one.

It was created by Elspeth Young, the illustrator from my sister-in-law's book on Women of the Old Testament. She is a very gifted artist and I am so thankful to be able to have a copy of this work. I feel melancholy and happy at the same time when I look at it.

Morgan: A Young Girl With Attitude

2010-04-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

When Morgan was young, she was very, um, lively. Well, that's not exactly it. Precocious? No, that kind of sounds bad. Let me give you two examples of her behavior and you can decide for yourself.

When Morgan was three we were at my parents' house. My dad had just come in from doing chores. (Or maybe not. Sometimes he doesn't change right after doing chores, which drives my mom bananas.) He was bouncing Morgan on his knee when all of a sudden she wrinkled up her nose and said, "Ewww Grandpa, you stink. You need to change your pants."

I was quite shocked and just looked at her for a second and then she started carrying on again. "Grandpa, you really smell bad. You stink. You need to change your pants!"

I was embarrassed, so I said "Morgan, that isn't very nice. Don't talk to Grandpa like that. You need to be polite."

She looked at me, somewhat surprised, so I reiterated my stance. "Morgan, you need to be polite."

Again she looked at me and then back to my dad and without missing a beat she said, "Grandpa you stink. You need to change your pants, PLEASE!"

She was not quite three when this next incident happened. I know this for sure because I was pregnant with Ally and she was born before Morgan was three.

Somewhere Morgan, unfortunately, got the idea that anyone without a flat stomach (which is most people) have a "baby in their tummy".

I took her with me to Schreibers one day to pick up my check. A bunch of people, most of whom were men that I didn't know very well, were standing around in a semi-circle chatting. Morgan walked up to each of them and poked them in the stomach one by one and said, "You have a baby in your tummy. And you have a baby in your tummy. And you have a baby in your tummy." etc.

It was very embarrassing, but I really hoped that since she was so little they might not really know what she was saying.

Well, I really should have found a way to nip that in the bud because the next week I was at my parents' house again because my aunt and her new husband were there visiting, along with my grandma and my other uncle and aunt. They were all sitting in a big row across the couch and chair.

Morgan started right into her same routine of "You've got a baby in your tummy, and you've got a baby in your tummy....", until she came to my Aunt Shirley, who I need to mention has quite a large chest, and Morgan's eyes got really big and she said, "And you've got TWO babies in your tummy!"

I have never been more grateful for the fact that Aunt Shirley has a good sense of humor.

My "Aha" Moment in Church Today

2010-04-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

Somebody in church was saying that we should get to a point where we want to do what's right.

Well, I do. I really do.

So, I started thinking about why I don't always do everything I should.

I finally figured it out.

(Are you ready for it? It's big.)

If I could just stay away from other people, I could keep all 10 of the 10 Commandments and, quite possibly, any other commandments that are sent my way.

(Not that I'm making excuses and blaming other people for my short comings, I really do think this possibly could work. Think about it.)

A Morning Conversation:

2010-04-07T09:18:00.001-07:00

Austin (on the toilet, after being in the bathroom quite a while): "Blistering blue barnacles!" (He has been reading a lot of Tintin with Hal lately.)

Me: "Austin, you need to eat better food. Are you having trouble going potty?"

Austin: "No."

Austin, a minute later, still in the bathroom: "Can I have some fruit?"

(A few weeks ago he said, "No, I'm not constipated. It's just that my poop is a little sleepy.)

Disclaimer: I never, ever said the word "poop" without visibly cringing until after my third child was born. Now it seems to be an everyday occurrence, which begs the question; Do our lives really get better or worse after having children?

It's Spring Break!

2010-04-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

How do I know this?

Because the kids have already eaten about 100 granola bars - each!

Also, we have about a foot of new snow.

We've (actually the kids) decided that we should just stay home this whole week and relax. It's only the second day and already I'm wondering if that was such a great idea.

And in other news....

Austin loves to decorate for each holiday. The only way I can get him to let me take down decorations from one holiday is to tell him which holiday comes next that we will decorate for.

Today he asked me which holiday is coming up next. I said, "Well, let's see. I guess it is Mother's Day."

He said, "Okay."

Then a few minutes later he came back and said, "What is Mother's Day about?"

Apparently I have not been pouring on the guilt early enough for him to know. We'll have to remedy that this week.

Favorite Photo Friday

2010-04-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

I love, love, love this photo!

It was taken by my fabulous young friend, Katie, when Ally was four.

I think Ally and I have both grown up quite a bit since then!

Someone's Name Is MUD!

2010-03-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

(Note: I used to scrapbook. It took a lot of time and I finally gave it up when Austin was born. I've decided to put some of the old scrapbook stories here to keep them all together. So, some of the photos might be cropped in weird shapes, which I really regret now. Also, I might get lazy and just scan some of the scrapbook pages. We'll see how it goes. Here is one of my favorite stories, I'll just scan a couple of the photos.)

In July of 1999, we went on our somewhat annual trip to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, to see my relatives on my mom's side. Bonners Ferry is a beautiful little town, about as far north as you can get in Idaho, so we usually make a trip up to Canada while we are there. This time, Morgan was playing with my cousin Ben's daughter, Audrey, and didn't want to go with us. Tanya, Ben's wife, said Morgan could stay with them for a few hours while we took Ally with us. I was a little concerned about this because Morgan could be quite a handful, but Tanya assured me she would be fine. Little did I know then that Ben and Tanya's kids were every bit as lively as mine are.

We only stayed in Canada for about an hour or so because Ally was asleep so we didn't do much more than buy our usual candy bars and then head home. We were about a block away from Tanya and Ben's house when I saw the strangest thing. It looked like some animals that I had never seen before, running down the road. They looked a lot like two-legged doberman dogs. When we got closer I realized that they weren't animals at all, but little naked black kids running down the road. I couldn't imagine what kind of a mother would let her little kids run down the road like that, without a stitch of clothing on. When we got closer still I realized that they weren't black kids at all, but little white kids covered all over with wet, black mud. And, one of them had a long, blond ponytail that was starting to look very familiar!

(This was after they'd dried off a bit. When I saw them at first they were the dark, shiny color of the wet mud, all over. Also, I couldn't see their faces because they were running away from us, the same direction as the car was going.)

According to Morgan, they had decided to play "piggies" in the garden while Tanya was watering. They were starting to get so dirty that she made them strip off their clothes so they wouldn't get stained. We thought they could just run through the sprinkler and the mud would wash right off, but the water was cold and there was just not enough pressure. They just got little clean stripes on their backsides.

We finally hosed them off, kicking and screaming, then transferred them into the laundry sink for the second round. Then they were finally clean enough to go into the house to the real bathtub, where we tried (in vain) to scrub the last bits of mud out of their noses and ears. Morgan ended up with a nasty rash that lasted for a while.

Trying To Make Scripture Reading Fun For The Whole Family, Idea #532

2010-03-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

So, once again it was time to read scriptures and, once again, there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (and the kids weren't so thrilled either).

Anyway, since Austin is so obsessed with Harry Potter (he still sleeps with the wand he got for Christmas every single night), to make it fun for him we (I) decided that we should all read with British accents, like Harry Potter characters. I'm not sure where the idea came from, possibly sheer desperation.

Some of us were specific characters. I started out as Ron Weasley, my personal favorite, though I didn't do a great job. The kids made fun of the way my voice got higher in parts. They dubbed it "Ron Weasley, going through puberty". Not a very flattering description, is it?

Next came Morgan and she does have the accent down pretty well. Austin, of course, was Harry Potter and he was happy to read, which almost never happens. He also does a pretty mean British accent, I must say. It must be all that practicing he does on an almost daily basis. It is pretty cute.

Ally was next and surprised us by saying she was going to be Dumbledore. What surprised us even more was the sounds that came out of that girl's mouth. I couldn't quite place it, but then I figured it out. I swear she sounded just like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. I have never seen Hal laugh so hard while reading scriptures. Usually he is just giving most of the rest of us disgusted looks. She kind of ended up sounding a little more like Marge Simpson toward the end, but at least she was enjoying herself.

Hal was up next and the kids tried to talk him into doing Dobby, but he politely declined. I think he and I had the worst accents by far. But, if it keeps the kids entertained and somewhat interested then I'm all for it.

We talked about who else we could do. Looney Tunes looks like it might be up next.

Also in the future: reading scriptures like Lady Gaga (a' la Poker Face). Try it, it actually seems to work. What doesn't seem to work at all is Bon Jovi music. You can not, no matter how hard you try, read scriptures to the tune of Livin' On A Prayer.

Aren't you glad we try out all these ideas so your family doesn't have to?

I Feel So Exposed!

2010-03-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

I just put our house for sale on ksl.com. It's the first actual advertising I've done. I feel almost naked putting the photos out there of our house. Like people can just peek in the windows at us. I don't like this feeling at all.

There was only room in the ad for 7 photos, and I really wanted to put in some of more rooms than the space allowed, so I started a new blog to show the other photos and put a note in my ksl.com ad.

Is this a dumb idea? Please tell me if it is because I really want to know. If it is, I'll pull the blog. I just really, really want to get the selling part over with. Soon. I don't know how I'm going to keep the house clean enough to show all the time! (I do have a life, you know!)

I put the blog address in the text of my ksl ad. I hope that's not against the rules. If so, they will ban me from advertising there and then what would I do?

In case you are curious, or may just know someone who is interested, here is my new blog address:

nibleyutahhomeforsale.blogspot.com (At least that's what I think it is. Let me know if it doesn't work!)

Let me know if there is anything else I should list that potential buyers may want to know or see. Thanks!

Wish me luck! (Because I feel like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown!)

Favorite Photo Friday

2010-03-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

This a photo of a favorite boy of mine.

He has some funny, quirky habits. One of them is the fact that he ALWAYS has on only one sock when he doesn't have shoes on. Always. No exceptions. The one thing we still haven't figured out is if it is the same foot that has the sock on it. I need to start taking photos of his feet and not his cute little face so I can see for sure. I keep trying to remember, and I know it is the right foot, but then I forget if it is the right foot that is always bare or has the sock on it. I need to start writing it down. (I'm sure it will be of ultimate interest years from now, whether it is the same foot or not.)

So, on to the photo.

Austin gets to use the school library now. His books always have a common theme, Halloween. It's still his very favorite thing, all year long. His favorite color? Orange, of course. (He wants an orange bedroom. I keep trying to put him off by saying it will clash with the green paint.)

Among the various Halloween themed books, a favorite started to emerge. It's called I'm Not Afraid Of This Haunted House by Laurie Friedman. The book started coming home more and more frequently last fall until it came home every single week. Then he discovered that the school had two copies of it and that he could check out BOTH copies. I tried to explain why this wasn't a good idea (other kids might want to check out this book, this way you only have one story from school to read instead of two, etc.). I even broke down and bought him his own copy of the book, which seemed to help him branch out to other new Halloween stories. For a while, anyway.

So, imagine my surprise (and dismay) when he came home from school today, once again, with both of the school's copies of this book. Here he is with both school copies AND his very own copy.

It really is a cute book for kids. You may want to consider checking it out and reading it for yourself. That is, if Austin hasn't hogged all the available copies.

Open Mouth......You Know.

2010-03-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to consider your audience. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to blurt out something that you think might be funny, especially if it might make someone else unhappy. Sometimes......oh never mind. Sometimes I should just keep my big mouth shut.

Cathie Astle, a girl who grew up around the corner from me (we waited at the bus stop together every day in junior high, along with Carmelle Floyd) just got married for the first time. I am so excited for her! She married another classmate of ours named Shane.

Anyway, we had a bridal shower for her and lots of the girls we grew up with in Providence were there. So, so fun. I had such a great time. My friend Linda, who I also grew up with, came with me and it was just nice to be with the girls and talk about the old days.

Except for one little thing. (One major thing, actually.)

I think I offended Cathie's mom.

Cathie's mom, Charlotte, was visiting with us too, which I enjoyed, and we were all kind of talking about different things in the neighborhood I grew up in.

One thing that we all agreed was a bad thing was the mink farm. My biggest complaint was the stench. If you've never lived anywhere near a mink farm, you have no way to even imagine how rotten those little creatures can smell.

Cathie's mom told us that once a mink got out and got into their rabbits and ate the FEET off of the baby rabbits. I was highly traumetized thinking of this and was trying to tactfully ask what happened to the baby rabbits and if they had to put them to sleep.

I finally worded it in a way that I think wasn't offensive and Cathie's mom told me that the baby rabbits died from their wounds. Well, stupid me, I started connecting in my brain that they died from losing their little rabbit feet and you can pretty much guess my next statement. (It's true, I have no internal editing tool.)

"Oh, so they died because they were unlucky."

When Charlotte gave me a strange look, I didn't figure out it was because she couldn't believe I would say such a thing to her. I just thought she was confused so I tried to explain it to her ("You know, they lost their rabbit feet."), which made it worse.

I was mortified when I realized that she didn't think that was amusing at all. I forgot that these were their family pets I was being so flippant about. I tried to move the subject to those crazy blue and green dyed rabbit feet we used to buy when we were kids (I had a green one), which was the only thing I could think of, but Charlotte still kind of looked at me like I was nuts.

I only felt a little tiny bit better when first Linda very discretely chuckled and then Lisa Fuhriman, a few seats over, giggled just loud enough so I could hear her.

I was glad somebody got my unfortunate sense of humor and vowed, once again, for about the millionth time, to keep my comments to myself.

We'll see how long it lasts this time.

Grandma's Teeth

2010-03-18T15:55:00.001-07:00

I don't know what jogged my memory of this the other day, but once in a while it pops into my head.

Right after my Grandpa Hendricks died, in 1992, Hal and I stayed overnight with my grandma to help her do a few things and so she wouldn't be alone.

Quite late at night, probably around 11:00 or so, I started craving a sweet treat. I knew where my grandpa usually hid a stash of caramels, his favorite candy, and I figured there would probably still be some there because he hadn't been gone very long. (Though caramels aren't my favorite, so I must have really wanted something sweet or hoped that there might be other candy hidden there as well.)

I sneaked out to my grandma's kitchen as quietly as I could, so I wouldn't wake her up. Then I opened the cupboard and reached in. I found a glass there, in front of the usual candy containers. I went to move the glass to the countertop so I could get to the candy and something splashed on me. In the dim moonlight I examined the glass a little closer to see what the deal was when I realized what was in it, a pair of teeth! It scared the daylights out of me. (I don't know why it scared me so badly, I was used to seeing my other grandparents' teeth in glasses in their bathroom.) I think I even squealed a little bit. I hurriedly set the glass back and ran back into the guest room and jumped under the covers.

At the time, not thinking clearly, I really thought that my grandma had put her teeth there to scare me away from eating all her candy (which is funny because she is my "nice" grandma - maybe that's why it was so scary to me, because it seemed so out of character for her).

Now that I am a lot of years away from the situation, I bet she put them there to hide them because she was embarrassed and didn't want us to see her teeth. It was just rotten luck for both of us that I happened to have such a bad sweet tooth.

I still get a little chill thinking about the whole ordeal.

Clarification:

2010-03-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

It is not really laundry, itself, that I have a problem doing. It is UNNECESSARY laundry.

There is a difference.

(A big difference. Will someone please teach this to my kids?)

Favorite Photo Friday!

2010-03-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo that I keep by my computer desk. It's from when the girls were around 4 and 7 years old. I think we ALL look a lot younger.

One thing that I remember about this photo is that I HATED the haircut that I had at the time. You can't really see it here but the funny thing is that it's similar to the one I have now.

Ah, life seemed so much more simple then, but really it wasn't. I'm glad we're at the place we are now.

It is fun to look back once in a while, though.

What Did The Mayans Know Then That We Don't Know Now?

2010-03-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, so the other day we were kidding around about the Mayan calendar and how it ends in 2012. We said we should have a big party to celebrate when the world might have ended, but didn't. Unless you live under a rock, you've heard it all before too.

What I hadn't heard, because I don't really pay attention to that sort of stuff, is the exact day the world will supposedly end, December 21st.

December 21st? What? Why hadn't anyone informed me of this before?

Why is this significant? Because it's THE DAY BEFORE my 45th birthday. Why didn't this ring a bell for anyone in my immediate family? They all seemed to know what day it was. Didn't they think I might want to know ahead of time if I will have yet another unhappy birthday?

Well, I am here to tell you all right now that I am going to throw myself a major birthday party on that day. (No, not THAT day - on my birthday, the day AFTER that day.) Right now, you're all invited to a birthday open house in my honor. (I did mention that I've only had one actual birthday party in my life, right? I told my family they need to do something big. Let's hope they follow through so I don't have to make my own birthday cake that year.)

If you come we can crank up the tunes and have a dance in our basement (my personal favorite leisure time activity). We can also play pool or charades or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey or any other party games we feel like playing. We may even go nuts and have a pinata.

In other words, if you come, we can all party like it's 1999. (Or any other time when we all thought the world was going to end and it really didn't.)

We Can Now Add "Car Thief" to My Rap Sheet

2010-03-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

Today was kind of a crazy day. I'll spare you all the minor details, but at one point, Morgan and I were in my bedroom and we heard a loud crash. I went outside and also looked in the garage, but couldn't see anything amiss so I didn't worry about it again after that.

Anyway, a few hours later, after Hal had already gone to take the girls to their first basketball game tonight and Austin and I were hurrying to get to my last Activity Day activity (a mother-daughter tea party), I tried to open the garage door. It went up a little and back down, up and down, up and down, up and down, like it was possessed. I stopped it and it went back down. I tried again, up and down, up and down, up and down. I tried to open it manually, but I can't do it myself, which I usually can. I tried to call Hal, but his phone was dead (I found out later).

So, I did the only thing left for me to do at that point. I "borrowed" the truck that was sitting in our driveway. I'm not sure whose it was, I just know that it was not ours. But, the key was in it, and Hal always loans his truck out to his friends so the fact that it was there meant that someone else probably had one of our vehicles. (And I'm glad this truck was not ours. It stunk. It reminded me of lots of vehicles my family had while I was growing up. Not only did it smell, the seats were a mess, it was full of junk and it was very loud.) I had a hard time figuring out why the clutch wouldn't work, but once I got it going I hurried out of my driveway, swinging wide, just in time to narrowly miss the police car that happened to be driving by at the time (our neighbor's son-in-law). Rats. I forgot my purse, but didn't have time to go back and get it. I was just glad I remembered to grab my glasses. This would not be a convenient time to run over something.

I hustled to the church just in time to explain that I was late because I had to steal a car to get there. (I told the leaders, not the girls. I don't think it's a very good example to steal a car to get to a church activity. Maybe this is why they released me last week.) I gave the girls my lovely little speech on etiquette and then proceeded to break every rule of etiquette while I scarfed down lots of little tea sandwiches because I had missed dinner tonight, taking care of other things that needed to be done.

Hal came and found me and he was not happy at all that I had taken the truck. He thought someone had stolen it for real. He traded me vehicles, which I was very grateful for because I never could figure out how to turn the lights on in the truck. When I made it home later, he had already traded back with whoever the truck belonged to so our truck was in the driveway. I was quite happy to see it.

So anyway, back to the tea party, after I had eaten and stayed a polite enough amount of time, I let the other leaders take over while I ran to take the girls to their 2nd basketball game of the night. I had missed the first one earlier. They were playing to see who would get to go to regions. As I sat there, my head started to pound. It wasn't a particularly thrilling game because neither of my girls got to play but their team will be going on, which means they need to play on Saturday, which I'm not entirely thrilled about. Oh well, it will all be over soon enough.

So, we just got home in time to get Ally ready for her 7th grade ski day and just realized that the waterproof gloves she needs are neatly packed away at the other house, which I can't get to because the present owner is already in bed. We'll just have to send her with the three non-waterproof pairs we have here and hope for the best. She will try snowboarding for the first time. Today she bought enough candy to feed a small third-world country for a week, so she might not feel so great when she gets home, no matter how well she does. I worry about that girl. She is mad at me because I wouldn't let her buy a Rock Star caffeine drink. It was kind of nice to have to ask someone else to pick her up tomorrow because I need to stay here to wait for the garage door opener guy to come fix our broken spring and I still can't get out of my garage. Maybe I should wait a couple weeks before fixing it so I can stay home. Doesn't that sound nice? It does to me.

Well, it's time for me to eat something healthy and get to bed. Tomorrow is another day. A clean slate. I like the sound of that.

And, if I stay home all day, I just may not commit any more felonies. (Or is stealing a car a misdemeanor? Let's hope I never have to find out.)

Thanks for Nothing

2010-03-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

So, as previously mentioned (a lot), I have been working very hard to get this place ready to put on the market. I have already shown it once to the brother-in-law of one of my neighbors who literally showed up at my doorstep as I was walking in the door from church on Sunday. That is another whole story in itself. (He needed to see it right then, as they were leaving to go back to American Fork and had just been waiting around for me to get home so he could see it. Thankfully, I had cleaned up most everything on Saturday and made Ally clean up the kids' bathroom right before we left for church, which I have never done before. The kids had also all cleaned their rooms on Saturday. Whew! It was nice to get that first showing over with because he was really nice and complimentary and didn't look at anything too closely.)

So, anyway, I have really been working hard to get rid of all the piles of clutter that have had no place to go since I lost my storage room when Austin was born. I've been able to move all the extra stuff into the storage room of our new house, which has been nice. I love living like this. I never, ever want to live with clutter again.

Apparently not everyone has appreciated my efforts.

Since Austin has been camped out in our bedroom for the last few years, (one of the big reasons for our move, hopefully he'll sleep in his own bed once he has his bedroom right next to ours) he has had a lot of stuff floating around our room, toys, clothes, blankets, etc. We've also had lots of piles of books and magazines, as Hal and I are both avid readers, though our time is pretty limited these days. So, all the things we are hoping to read get tossed on nightstands, on the floor by the bed, on the table by the couch, you get the idea.

So, my point is, I've slowly gotten rid of each and every pile. Our house is now 99 percent staged, with just a couple of piles left in the kitchen and two boxes left under the pool table that need to be taken care of. It looks much, much (much) better.

Austin walked into my bedroom today and looked around and said, "Boy, it looks kind of bare in here now that you've gotten rid of all the extra stuff. The only pile I see in here is that stuff on the top of dad's dresser. It doesn't look cozy like it used to."

Gee, Austin, you're welcome.

Me? Funny? I Just Report the Facts

2010-03-08T21:18:00.000-08:00

Someone mentioned to me that my blog hasn't been as funny lately and requested a funny post. (You know who you are.)

Are you kidding me?

Don't you know nothing kills the ability to be funny quicker than someone requesting for you to be funny. Right now. (And, haven't you heard? I've had a few things on my mind lately. Actually, now that I think about it, I've rarely left the house in the last two weeks, thus cutting the possibility of getting into my usual sticky situations WAY down. Remember Ikea?)

Someone please teach me how to link to an older post and I'll try to find you a good one. (If I recall correctly, I think last May was a particularly brutal month.) I'm still a little link impaired, I don't know why I've never figured it out.

Actually, now that I think about it, Ms. "Please try to be funny again", why don't YOU send ME a link to a funny post?

My Favorite Healthy Snack

2010-03-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

I always wonder what other people eat, don't you? (My husband doesn't. He hardly even cares what HE eats. One more example of how we are opposites in almost every way imaginable.)

You know how there are the "live to eat" people and the "eat to live" people? I'm definitely a "live to eat" type. Luckily, I've been blessed with a pretty good metabolism so far. I guess it makes up for the lack of good luck in other areas, like skin, hair, personality, etc.

Ok, so on to the food. This is a snack that I eat literally every day. Sometimes it counts for lunch if I don't have anything else good that is easy to fix that day. I just eat more of it.

First of all, take a nice juicy apple and cut it up. I like to use Fuji or Gala because they're still a little sweet, but not too sweet, like Red Delicious, and they don't get mealy.

Next, take a box of these babies. I just LOVE these crackers. If you haven't tried them, you're missing out. Unless of course, you don't like the taste of rosemary. The people in my house either love or hate these crackers, so if you buy them and don't like them someone else hopefully will. One warning, do NOT under any circumstances buy the store brand of these. It is not anywhere near as good as the real deal.

And finally, cheese. I just discovered this cheese last month and we've gone through about 5 of these boxes already. It is really mild and creamy. Morgan and I agree that we feel "rich" when we eat this cheese. Before I started eating this, I would just slice up Mozzarella to use for my snack. (I wonder if rich people feel "poor" when they eat Mozzarella that they've sliced up for themselves.) Just so you know, because I was curious, this cheese has less fat than Mozzarella, but Mozzarella has more protein, so whatever you have is great. They both taste good.

So, there you have it, my favorite healthy snack. (My favorite un-healthy snack is brownies, which probably explains my bad skin.)

What's your favorite healthy snack? In case I decide to branch out some day.

It could happen.

Our New Floor Plan

2010-03-04T12:53:00.001-08:00

Here it is! The main floor plan of our new house. I copied and enlarged it from the home show book. Unfortunately, it's looking a little bit crookedy, sorry about that!

The room that says dining room is actually soundproofed and used as a music room. We are thinking of building bookshelves and making it a library because we have LOTS of books (and a library) here.

Anyway, this gives you a general idea of the layout. All the bedrooms are in one spot so hopefully (fingers crossed) Austin will sleep in his own bed once we move.

(My OCD self doesn't like seeing it so crookedy, but I won't take the time to fix it today. I just thought you might want to see it sooner, rather than later. )

If anyone is local, I'd love to give you a little tour after May 5 so I can bounce some of my great (and maybe not-so-great) ideas off of your heads.

I've already been talked into keeping both the bright emerald green Corian kitchen countertops with the white racing stripe (at least for a few months so I can live with the kitchen and see if there is anything else I'll want to change) AND, believe it or not, I'm also keeping the Pepto Bismol pink countertop in the laundry room. I do have other plans for that room though. Great plans. (That may or may not involve more bead board. - Is that one word or two?)

That's it for now. I'll post photos of the inside of this house in May.

De-personalizing

2010-03-02T17:23:00.000-08:00

Today I spent quite a bit of time taking down most of the big photos from our "gallery wall" in the basement. It was rather depressing. It was especially depressing when I realized that I really do need to paint the (relatively) big family room down there. Not my idea of fun.

I know people looking at houses don't want to see other peoples' family photos all over the place, but it sure looks stark seeing the bare minimum that is left.

Maybe I'm just sad because I never got the wall quite right, to my satisfaction. I never did take a photo of what I had up because it was always a work in progress. It was never "finished". I was always waiting for that semi-perfect (I don't like the word perfect - in my life there is no such thing) family portrait where everyone looks pretty good. We usually had at least one person with a scowl on their face or their eyes half shut. (I always looked somewhat presentable, because I'm no dummy. I put forth all the effort to make all the appointments and get everyone to the studio on time and in somewhat coordinating outfits. I had to listen to everyone grousing because they are being inconvenienced by yet another family photo. I also spend the time agonizing over the proofs to pick out the least bad photos. I also pay for the finished products (in more ways than one), so you can bet I'm not going to pick one where I look too bad - no matter how good everyone else looks.) You would think these guys would catch on that if they would just cooperate and all look relatively happy in the same shot, we wouldn't have to try as often to get a "good" family portrait. Some people never learn, do they?

Anyway, I need to just focus on what's ahead and remember it will all be worth it in the end.

If not, please shoot me.

Thank you.

Question of the Day:

2010-03-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

Today is one of those days when I ask myself, "Would I like to have kids or a clean house?".

Kids?

Clean house?

Kids?

Clean house?

Today is also one of those days that I refuse to answer, on the grounds it might incriminate me.

Self- Esteem

2010-02-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago we watched the video of Donny Osmond in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - at least we watched most of it. I'm not a fan of Potiphar's wife and her maids' outfits. Anyway...

A few days later Austin was sitting at the counter eating lunch. He casually said, "I'm glad my sisters aren't going to throw me into a pit."

I looked at him and asked what he meant.

He said, "Well, because we all know I'm your favorite. But it's okay because they still don't hate me."

Not yet anyway.

How Was Church Today?

2010-02-28T14:47:00.001-08:00

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Here are the facts:

Exhibit A

The bread from the sacrament tray that Austin dropped. Morgan scooped up everything that landed on the bench and plopped it back on the tray, which I'm sure the people sitting behind us didn't appreciate. The same people kindly handed us a ziploc bag to put everything in that fell all over the floor. The poor little deacon, our neighbor, Barry Saraiva, didn't know what to do. The girls were highly embarrassed.

Exhibit B

The note that Austin penned immediately after getting chastised by his sisters for dropping the tray. First he wrote "I am sick. Tacke me home." and when that didn't get the desired result, he added the "Pleas", thinking that would work on me. It didn't.

I did compliment him on his writing skills though.

We are now sitting here waiting for the brownies to come out of the oven. Hopefully that will help us all feel better about the day. (David Archuleta showed up INSIDE the sealed box of brownies. He's a tricky one. He also sent Morgan a rose at the school for Valentines' Day.)

The End.

Favorite Photo Friday and Catching Up (Home Edition)

2010-02-26T02:22:00.000-08:00

I remembered!

I think I've forgotten to do Favorite Photo Friday for a couple of months now. (I just hope this isn't a photo that I've posted before. I may have, because I really love it.)

I've been very side-tracked lately by packing boxes for the move and kid discipline issues that have not been fun at all. Actually the packing hasn't been too bad, it's the kids that have been driving me crazy. Maybe I should just leave them in this house and go live in the other house all by myself. I've already told them this house will be the "vacation home" if we don't sell it before we move into the other one. It may be the only vacation they'll get this summer if we have two mortgages. (Oh my gosh! It just dawned on me that we may have to take care of TWO yards this summer. Heaven help us, I think that would be the death of me - and Hal's the one who really does most of the yard work.)

We have been having major issues with a couple of the kids and t.v. and computer time and computer games, etc. I've cut way back on my own computer time (hence, neglecting this blog), especially facebook, and it has been good for me too. The other kid is mad at me about the move, so really, right now they all hate me.

On a happier note, I got to go with Hal yesterday and look at flooring for the other house. He is sold on the idea of this new bamboo flooring for the kitchen. (I'm not sure if I mentioned that our "new" house is 14 years old so we will be updating a few things.) The old floor is "wood" Pergo and in perfect condition. I don't love it, but I don't hate it like I really dislike the pink and seafoam green carpet and pink paint. I'd rather replace other things like the kitchen countertop. It is a nice Corian countertop and in great shape, it just happens to be a bright emerald green with a white racing stripe. Try picking a paint color to match that. There's also the issue of the Pepto Bismol pink countertop in the laundry room. Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I am not a fan of pink. Anywhere.

I want to be very careful of what I say here because we are buying this house from some friends of ours and I would hate to have her think I'm making fun of the decorating and hurt her feelings. The truth is that this house was very much in style when it was built. It was in the Parade of Homes and actually won the peoples' choice award. I think the fact that it was so much in style then is why it seems dated now. I'm trying to learn from this and keep things pretty neutral, while working with the things we need to keep that are already there. Some things, like the white laminate cabinets in the laundry room and the bright navy blue countertop in the basement bathroom will be staying so I'm trying to figure out how to make them look like they are a deliberate choice. I have some great plans for that (huge) bathroom. We'll see how far the budget goes. Right now it's all about the budget.

Oh, I just had a great idea! I am planning on putting white beadboard in the kids' (little) bathroom upstairs, but I wonder if it would look good in the laundry room too. Do you think it would look okay with white laminate cabinets?

We don't officially own the house until May 5, so I probably shouldn't post photos until then. The house does have some great Cape Cod-type pillars that separate the entry from the front room. Maybe I'll have to sneak a photo of those in one of these days to show kind of the style I'm thinking of for the inside of the house. Feel free to post any suggestions/opinions on remodeling or anything specific I'm thinking of doing.

One thing I'd love to know now is if anyone has a raised bar and the pros and cons of it. There is a raised bar in the kitchen and I'm thinking of having the new countertop be all the same height to give a little more counter space because there's not a really big area to roll out dough with kids, etc. Also with a raised bar, I always think of little kids falling off those tall bar stools. I think the only advantage would be for hiding dirty dishes from sight, but the bar is on the side of the kitchen that is adjacent to the family room and you have to walk through the kitchen area to get to the family room anyway, so people would have already seen my dirty dishes. So, if you have experience with a raised bar, please let me know what you think.

Anyway, on to the photo. This is Austin back when he still used to fit in the kitchen sink. He LOVED to take baths here. Even when he got older I was always afraid he would try to jump out by himself and slip and hit his head on the floor.

Isn't he a cute little devil?

Happy Friday!

The story that always makes my mom laugh... and I mean always

2010-02-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

Hey there, people!
This is Ally Fronk, my mom's favorite middle child (it's true, ask her!) and I'm here to tell you a little story about my friend, Katelyn.

It happened a few months ago, when I had study hall. We were setting up chairs in the gym for it with a 6th grade P.E. class.
My friend saw a few kids wiggling around and waving their arms, and decided to join them.
A few minutes later, a teacher came up to her and said, "You do know those kids are handicapped, right?"
Well, she was pretty embarrassed, so her face turned red, and she walked away.

So, if my mom is ever in a bad mood, all you have to say is "You do know those kids are handicapped, right?" and she'll light up like a candle :)

Mime School

2010-02-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

Morgan is at that age where she is looking at potential colleges, which makes me a little melancholy, since I really do enjoy having her around. Most of the time.

Unfortunately, her search for which school she wants to attend has also inconvenienced me a bit, which is not good. She filled out some survey on the internet and put my e-mail address in for the contact info. I've now been getting all sorts of junk in my in-box. I've been looking for some way to pay her back for a while now.

She has recently taken the PLAN test, which is sort of a practice test for the SAT and she ended up doing VERY well. I'm so proud of her! Because of this, she has now been getting letters from LOTS of colleges and universities. Some well known, some not so well-known and some that I've never even heard of or dreamed that they were even in existence.

On Tuesday, she got a letter from the Colorado School of Mines. Mines? I didn't think you had to go to school for that, I thought you just had to be born into a coal mining family or learn on the job or something.

Anyway, I got the bright idea to play with the envelope a bit and, with the help of some white-out, the school of "Mines" became the school of "Mimes", complete with a little logo of a mime that was very obviously hand drawn by yours truly. (I just noticed the mime has six fingers on one hand.)

Morgan came home from school and we had a little chuckle about it and I asked her if she could tell that I had drawn the picture, and she said it was pretty obvious. I didn't really think much more about it until about 10:00 that night when she came home from her Young Women meeting. She came into the kitchen with the envelope.

"You didn't open that yet?" I asked her. I open everything immediately, because I'm naturally curious. It's one of my better qualities. (She got three more letters yesterday, including one from Duke University, that she still hasn't touched. I may open them myself if she doesn't get around to it soon.)

So, she sat down and started reading.

"A school for individuals who like math and science?" she read, sounding a bit confused.

"Engineering?" she said next.

She then read on until she came to the part in the letter that identified the school again, as the Colorado School of Mines.

"Mines?" she said out loud as I burst into laughter, realizing that she really did think there was a school for mimes that she'd been invited to attend.

"I thought you said you knew that I'd messed with the envelope." I said, still laughing.

"Well, I knew that you drew the picture, I just didn't know you'd changed anything else." she answered. I then asked her what she had done to qualify for such a prestigious mime school to be pursuing her. She didn't think that was funny at all.

"I did think it was kind of a random place to have that kind of a school." she said sheepishly, as I continued to laugh uncontrollably.

Seriously, a MIME school? She really didn't even bat an eye at the thought of it. It almost makes me wonder if she's looked into mime schools before.

I went to tell Ally what had happened and Morgan was not at all amused when Ally and I acted like mimes for the rest of the night. We had a rousing game of tug-of-war and locked ourselves in glass boxes over and over. Morgan was especially unhappy that I had mentioned it at all to anyone else.

In fact, I think she'll be pretty unhappy that I'm writing about it on the blog. She's still a little sensitive about the whole incident.

So, if you see her, please do me a favor. Don't say anything.

Just give her a big smile..............

and then pretend like you're stuck in a big glass box.

(Actually, please don't. I'm already in enough trouble. She'll probably make me take down this post and I think it's a funny story.)