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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

"Beachy Waves"???

My cute, cute, cute friend, Patty Cake, is going to be a bridesmaid for her sister's wedding in, like, a week. She thinks it would be pretty (and I concur) to have her hair long and wavy, a la Elle:

Vanessa:


Gisele:

or Kate:

So we've been trying to figure out how the heck to do it. I read somewhere that you twist a chunk of hair, then curl it with a curling iron to make it wavy. I wanted to try it, but I am currently without curling iron. Then I ran into this tutorial on YouTube, for "beachy waves" - the girl uses a flat iron! (And I like this tutorial because it has the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in the background, but it's a different version - Hawaiian-style, with a ukelele - very nice.) So I studied the tutorial and then tried it:


It mainly turned into ringlets!! Who knew that a flat iron could make ringlets? My little-girl-hair-guru, Sue, always talks about curling her girls' hair with her flat iron, and I was like, what kind of funky-arsed flat iron does she have?? But mine did the same! As the day has worn on, the ringlets have actually become more pronounced. So...not exactly the look I was going for, but maybe if I move the flat iron through my hair more swiftly or something. I feel like it's a little bit too Early Nineties Karlenn, but I don't know. Ben sure likes it.
Do any of you know how to do this wavy look? Patty and I are going to experiment on Sunday night. I'd love your input.

Superstar!!!! (Part 2)

At Sadie's preschool, they do this thing called Superstar, which I think is funny, because I think of Molly Shannon when I think of the word "superstar":

By the way, I've always thought that Molly Shannon has really great arms. So skinny.

Anyways, when your child is the Superstar, you put some photos on a poster and then go in and talk about your kid to her class. This is the Superstar poster I did last year for Dylan, when he was in preschool. I like to make my posters all scrapbookey. Here is Sadie's:

Not my best work, but it turned out pretty cute, I thought. Last year, when it was time for me to talk about Dylan, I just kind of rattled off a bunch of random facts about him, and all the three- and four-year-olds lost interest in about two seconds. So this year, I was armed with an enormous Ikea bag full of items that represent Sadie's hobbies and interests. I brought a pillow to represent the fact that Sadie looooooooves to sleep. I brought her favorite stuffed animal, Saw. I brought her three favorite books that she likes to read over and over. The kids were enraptured, which was great. Glad to be done.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Pennies from Heaven

So, I'm stealing my post title from Nat - she wrote about this in a more timely fashion. :)

My Grandma Spracher died two years ago, and we girls hadn't been to the gravesite since her burial. Lex was visiting a few weeks ago, and we decided to make the trek to Rigby to take a look at Grams' grave. We hadn't seen the gravestone yet - it's so beautiful:

Do you see those pennies on it? Grams used to pick up pennies that she saw lying in the street, in parking lots, etc. She liked to say that, every time you saw a penny on the ground, someone in heaven was thinking about you. I love that! Mom and her siblings have been putting coins on Grams' grave when they visit. We added our own to the collection:

The other day, I was picking up some stuff from Smith's, and I saw a penny in the entrance, on the floor. I grinned and picked it up. Some teenagers snickered at me, but I didn't care. :)

My Grandma H used to put five pinecones on my Grandpa H's grave every time she visited. They stood for five words: "I will always love you." I think stuff like that is so neat. Ben and I will have to figure something out that we can do if one of us dies before the other, which is pretty likely. :) I wish we could die at the exact same time.

Here are me, Nat, and Lex (I look like such a piece of crap next to them!!):


And Nat, Lex, and Mom:


Mom told the cutest story about Grams that I hadn't heard before - she and Gramps were praying one time, and Gramps is hard of hearing, and he couldn't hear Grams' prayer. So he goes, "Speak up!" And Grams says, "I'm not talking to you."

This is the grave of my great-grandpa:


And his first wife - she died when Gramps was only five, of impetigo:



My mom brought a couple of her beautiful roses to put on the grave:

It's a little blurry - I didn't know that I had a flower setting! Ben taught me that later. So from now on, my flower pictures will be much-improved.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

So. As you know, I'm a huge fan of shedoeshair.blogspot.com. And Sue, the lady that posts on it, had the cutest ideas about how to use scarves in little girls' hair. I was sooo excited to try it out on Sadie. I spent my last $5 on some material that matches some of Sadie's outfits, and then I got out my horrible old sewing machine (it's still having tension problems, which is going to be an issue, because I wanted to sew on my Christmas cards this year) and worked sooooooo hard to make the cutest scarves, of the right width and length and everything.
But Sadie refuses to wear them. Tears them out, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Sigh. I would wear 'em, but my heed is too big. :) So they sit on my shelf in my bathroom, beautifully pressed and unused. Dylan tried to make me feel better about it by wearing one:

He's so funny. I think he looks like the girls on Fiddler on the Roof.
In other hair news, Sadie now refuses to let me put sponge rollers in her hair at night. So I need to buy a curling iron. I've wanted one for quite some time now, for my own hair, so now I have double the reason for asking for a curling iron for Christmas. :) At this point, I would outright, directly address Ben on this post and ask him for a curling iron, but the man has only looked at my blog ONE TIME. Because I made him. Isn't that weird? I know he loves me and thinks I'm cool, so I'm trying to figure out why some person from a Nertz website found my recent, totally long post that involved the card game, Nertz, actually read the whole thing, and then commented so nicely about it, yet my eternal companion, my soulmate, my best friend, can't even look at my blog?? Men are so weird.
More hair news. After trying to talk Dylan out of his desire to have a fauxhawk, and failing, I've decided that it's not that big of a deal. You gotta pick your battles. So I promised him that, when I cut his hair tonight, I'm only cutting the sides and back, not the top. We'll see how this goes. I think it's kind of cute that he even cares. It's fun to see what your kids like, as far as style and hair. Who knew Dylan would be a fauxhawk guy? And who knows what kind of hair Sadie will want in a couple of years? However, I will say this: if she ever wants a perm, I will forbid her. Absolutely. There are some things I can't budge on. :)
And for the last of my hair news, after weeks of shedding like... well, like Mia and Brady do in the spring (Mia and Brady are my sister's cute, very furry dogs), I finally went and got my thyroid checked out. Because that's one of the symptoms that your thyroid is off. I thought for sure I was taking too much thyroid medicine, because they had bumped up my dosage during pregnancy, and obviously, I'm not pregnant anymore, but lo and behold, I wasn't taking nearly enough! So now I'm taking a higher dosage, which means that the chunks-of-hair-falling-out thing will abate, as will the can't-get-warm thing. And - bonus - I'll probably end up losing a few more pounds. You gotta love that. When I first found out I had thyroid disease, I was living in California, and when I got put on my medicine, I immediately dropped, like, 15 pounds, and my friends were all muttering, "Maybe I should go on thyroid medicine..."

Thursday, October 23, 2008

A Moose Working for Buffalo



Okay, so I'm stealing this from Jenny's blog. Her brother (and my brother-in-law), Spence (whose nickname is Moose), works for the Buffalo Bills, helping them run plays and stuff. I just think that is so freakin' cool. He loves football so much, so this must be like a dream job for him, to work for a professional team. Anyways, he is in a video clip here. And, to copy and paste what Jenny said:



He's wearing a long sleeved gray shirt
and dark shorts, and is the guy
handing the ball to the QB, Trent Edwards
in the first half of the video.
You can see him 3 times. :)



Go Spence!!

You Scared My Body!



I love that picture. I've gotten it in a couple of e-mails, and it makes me laugh so hard, because that is exactly how I feel when I'm riding a roller-coaster. I am such a chicken! I swear, one of these days, on a roller-coaster ride, I'm just going to faint dead away.

Anywho, Dylan and I got into our car accident, like, six weeks ago, but I forgot to write about Dylan's reaction to it and the aftermath. After we hit the guy (remember, it wasn't my fault! My brakes went out on me at a busy intersection!) and spun around a few times and came to a stop, Dylan just started yelling at me: "Why did you just hit him? Don't you know how to drive?!?" He was just ticked. Later, when we were on the sidewalk and the police were interviewing everyone, Dylan started crying. I was hugging him and telling him how sorry I was, and he muttered, "Mom, you scared my body." That is such an apt way of describing it! I, myself, was still shaking.

Ever since then, Dylan has been dealing with, like, PTSD. Anytime we go anywhere in the car, Dylan is constantly reminding me to brake, to slow down, that yellow means slow down, that red means stop, etc. etc. etc. If I get into the left turn lane, he's like, "Why are you SWERVING??? Are we going to hit someone again?" I keep reassuring him that, yes, I do know how to drive, and that the accident we got into was not my fault, but he still is a total backseat driver now. But his fear makes sense. It takes me months, emotionally, to get over accidents. Once, I got rear-ended, and for like a year, I was always watching my rear-view mirror when I was at stop lights. I was convinced I would get rear-ended again. And sometimes, if a car looked like it was coming too quickly, I would start gasping, and my heart would start pounding, and I would kind of brace myself for the inevitable rear-end. So Dylan's manicness makes sense. Poor kid.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

SPt - #21





So, again, here I am, doing Self-Portrait Tuesday on a Wednesday. Better late than never! The assignment this week was to go into detail about my #21 on my 100 Facts About Me post. (And if you don't remember what Self-Portrait Tuesday is, read this post, where I explain it.)


#21 - I don't know if I could ever go back to teaching public school.

Ohhhh, I loved those kids so much. They made me laugh all day long. But then I had the kids who said the F word to me. It was hard to bite my tongue during moments like that. I actually called a kid an a-hole and got into a whole lotta trouble for it.

And I hated parents. Most of 'em. There were a few wonderful parents, but I had a lot of really bad experiences. The main problem was that the parents wanted their kids to get A's. Forget the fact that their kid doesn't do in-class work while we're all doing it together. Easiest thing in the world. I had one dad who wanted me to change his kid's grade so that he could be eligible to try out for basketball. I said no, because this kid seriously just... sat there... in my class. Did no work at all. Just sat and looked around with a stupid grin on his face. Well, the dad went and bawled to the principal, and the principal basically forced me to offer this stupid kid like a thousand extra credit points to make up his grade so that he could try out for basketball. And guess what? He didn't make the team. :) That's what I call poetic justice.

During my first parent-teacher conference, the parents figured that they could crucify me, right there in the cafetorium. Um, I cried. Seriously. This one lady screamed at me for like 45 minutes, and the rest of the parents in line got angrier... and angrier... and angrier, so they all screamed at me, too. From then on, I brought an egg timer. When it went off, I said, "If you need to talk to me some more, call the office and make an appointment with me and the principal."

One lady came in after school and started screaming at me in my classroom. I kept asking her to keep her voice down, to control herself, and then finally, to let me take her to the office so we coudl have a mediator, and she wouldn't calm down. So I walked out of my classroom and away from her, before I could say something horrible that I would regret. And she followed me!! So I start running down the hall. And she starts running after me! So I took this little-known shortcut to the bathroom, and then hid in the stall by standing on the toilet so that she wouldn't be able to see my feet. True story.

So, because of all the horribleness I went through, I don't know if I could ever do it again. Maybe if I was extremely hard-pressed. Because teachers have awesome health benefits. But only as a very, very, very last-ditch effort. Kids these days have no respect. And many parents don't parent their children. Does that make sense? I felt like I was up against... new American culture. I got tired of fighting. I'm very, very glad to be at home with my kids. They drive me crazy, but at least I don't have 210 of them (overcrowding was also a problem - 40 kids per class. Killer).

Eight


8 Favorite TV shows
1. Medium
2. Pushing Daisies
3. Journeyman (I think it got cancelled. I'm sad about that.)
4. The Office
5. 30 Rock
6. City Confidential
7. Cold Case
8. Notorious (The last three are true crime shows. I love those kinds of shows. I don't know why.)

8 Things I did yesterday
1. Got up at the buttcrack of dawn to feed the baby.
2. Took Sadie to preschool.
3. Jogged 2.5 miles on the treadmill (I moved it up to 2.75 miles today, and boy, am I feeling the burn. Pain, pain, pain...)
4. Made homemade mac and cheese for dinner. I was being lazy.
5. Picked up Sadie from preschool.
6. Took Sadie to speech therapy.
7. Worked on my mom's birthday present.
8. Blogged, of course!!

8 Favorite places to eat
1. Craigo's
2. The Pizza Factory
3. Cafe Rio
4. Macaroni Grill
5. Texas Roadhouse
6. The Claimjumper
7. Rubio's
8. California Pizza Kitchen (most on this list aren't in I.F. Sigh...)

8 things I'm looking forward to
1. Sleeping with my heating pad on my thighs tonight.
2. Taking out my contacts. My eyes feel like cement right now.
3. Finishing up my mom's birthday present tonight.
4. Friday - no preschool. That means Sadie can sleep in and won't be a beyotch to me all day. She is not a morning person.
5. Friday - I'm going out of town with my parents! No kids for two whole days!!
6. Going home and eating dinner.
7. And then cuddling with my hubby-hubster. Maybe I'll put off finishing my mom's present until tomorrow... Yeah. Cuddling is #1 priority.
8. Stake conference on Sunday - I don't have to prepare a lesson! Yee-hah!

8 things I love about this Fall-
1. I'm already done planting my daffodils! Dylan and I planted them together.
2. Dylan and I had to gather a bunch of leaves for a school project. That was so much fun.
3. Sweater weather. Love it.
4. Cooking more. I love warm desserts in crisp weather.
5. Heating up the car in the morning. There is nothing better than loading up the kids into a toasty warm car.
6. General conference.
7. Staring at the cute Halloween and fall decorations at craft stores. Maybe I can get something my next paycheck... I have the dumbest Halloween decorations ever.
8. My mom's Halloween decorations. They are so cute.

8 things on my wish list
1. Lasik surgery.
2. I'd love to get down to a size seven again, but I don't know if that is planning for failure... I haven't been a seven since college.
3. I wish Sadie and Dylan would mind me more, without me always having to threaten them with time outs or being grounded.
4. I wish I could afford to dance at a studio - pay for adult classes.
5. I wish our medical bills were paid off.
6. I wish Micah would eat more.
7. I wish I could go on a nice vacation with my hubby.
8. I wish I could buy more jeans for Dylan and Ben. And a coat for Sadie. And a coat for Micah... Those things will take priority over cute Halloween decorations. :) One paycheck at a time...

My Natal Family

So. Patty put an open tag out there for her blogging friends to write about what I like to call our "natal families." Patty has a family much like mine - all girls - and she wrote down all the funny stuff she and her sisters used to do together, so I'll do the same. Believe me, there are plentiful stories to be told...



We, like Patty and her sisters, had to clean the kitchen every night, which was always annoying, but looking back on it now, it taught us a good work ethic and actually ended up being quality family time. Mom would always turn on a CD, and we'd sing and dance while washing dishes. I liked to pop in my INXS CD, because on this one song, "Suicide Blonde," our dog, Ebony, would get totally riled up. She'd start jumping up and down and barking and running around in circles. It was hilarious. One of us would rinse dishes, another would stack 'em, a third would clear the food and dishes, and the fourth would wipe off. And then mom would sweep. But it changed every night, so some nights I would sweep, etc. When Nat and I had rinsing and wiping off duties, respectively, we'd fight over the faucet. Our solution for the faucet conundrum was always one of two things. We'd either give each other thirty seconds with the faucet, then switch it to the other person. Or, one of us would use the sprayer and spray for thirty seconds, and then let the faucet-user use the water from the faucet for thirty seconds. I know; lame. The wiper-offer could have always just waited until the dishes were rinsed. But we were always in a hurry to get done, so that we could get to our homework. And, obviously, because there was a sprayer involved, we got into plenty of waterfights. I'm surprised that Mom didn't get more mad about the messes we made when we got into these waterfights. I know I would flip out if my kids did that!! I really need to loosen up. Hmmm....



Once, Dad was working during dinner because it was tax season, and we girls got into a food fight at the dinner table. I just remember thinking how funny it would be to fling applesauce at Lex, because she was being naughty, so I did it. And the food fight began. Mom was sooo mad that she made us stand against the counter and threw chicken parts at us. We were like, "Ouch! Mom!! Owww!!"



And once, Nat and I were fighting over the last piece of pie in the fridge, and Mom shoved us both outside and then ate it in front of us; we could see her, because we had french doors. She was all, "Yummmm..." and we were screaming, "Nooooooooooo!!!"



Mom taught us a thousand times how to play jacks, but we always forgot. So we always played a game with them that we called "Fifi and Foofoo." We'd spin each jack on one of its pointy ends and count the seconds that it spun. The one that spun the longest time was named "Fifi." Second runner-up was named "Foofoo." Then we'd have, like, best two out of three and stuff, to see if Fifi really was the best spinner.



We played this game where we'd lie on our backs, with our feet touching, and we'd foot-wrestle. We called it "Feety Fight." There was really no object. If our legs fell down, or if someone's foot came off the other person's foot, we'd just replace it and keep wrestling.



We still enjoy the "Clapping Game." Two of us will stand, facing each other, maybe two feet apart. And then you clap your hands together, trying to knock the other girl off her balance. We get a big kick out of making fun of each others' clapping style. Nat always wore a lot of rings, and she had bony fingers anyways, so when she clapped my hands, I would be almost crying from the pain!! Brianna's clapping style was like a barrage of cannon fire. She'd just clap-clap-clap-clap relentlessly. Lexi liked to grab my hands and psych me out that way. Nat says that I would always yell "Wooo!!" and kind of glance off the tops of her hands into a double Heil Hitler kind of a salute.



When I was an EFY counselor, I learned the game Zip Bong, and we played that on road trips all the time, especially if we had to stand in line a lot, like at Universal Studios or Disneyland. We'd arrange ourselves into a circle and play. The rule is that you can't show your teeth. So you cover your teeth with your lips (hard to do for all of us, because we all have big teeth), then move the play either clockwise or counter-clockwise by saying to the person next to you, "Zip." They can pass it along by saying "zip" to their other neighbor, or they can pass it back to you by saying "Bong." And we would try to make each other smile by making weird eyes and using weird voices. It was hilarious. I think it really embarrassed Dad. We were always embarrassing Dad. :) We're kind of a gregarious bunch. I know that our husbands get a little overwhelmed when we're all together, because we're quite hyper.



We still play Nertz whenever we get together. It's a game I learned at Ricks. We have dubbed it "Bitter Nertz," because we all have a tendency to get really bitter while we play. We say the meanest stuff to each other when we're playing! It gets intense. But it's really fun. And we've kind of made up our own little lexicon to go with it. "Coving" is when someone is laying down cards too close to their own piles, like a little cove on a lake that no one else has discovered. And we yell at each other for not clearing away King piles, or for making a mess of the central playing area. Once, we were playing so intensely, and Brianna was beating us, of course, because her mind is like a freaking computer, and Dad yelled, "I'm just sitting here pooping my pants!" It was a classic moment. Once, we added like thirty extra cards to Brianna's pile, and SHE STILL BEAT US!!



Nat was always the peacemaker, but when she was pushed hard enough, WATCH OUT!! Once, Lex was bugging her in some way, and she wouldn't stop, so Nat did a Tai Bo move on her and totally kicked her in the stomach! And then Nat tackled Lex and stuck her feet in Lex's face. It was sooooo funny. And once (I wasn't there for this one), Mom, Nat, Lex, and Beads went to Utah State for Nat to take some scholarship test, and on their way home, Lex and Beads were fighting over some toy. And Nat, without a word, grabbed the toy, rolled down her window, and threw it out. I giggle just picturing it.



I obviously could go on and on, but one more story. It was Thanksgiving, and I think my Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Boyd and a couple of our cousins were over. We had all eaten and were playing downstairs, and I went upstairs to get rolls for me and Nat. And we were breaking off pieces of roll and trying to throw them into each others' mouths across the room. We obviously weren't succeeding. Nat decided to throw a "bullet throw" (versus a "rainbow throw") to my mouth, and it totally landed right in my mouth! It was like 50 miles an hour, I swear! It was so funny.



So that's us. We're super! We're spastic! We're super, and we're spastic! And we're sprinkler heads! Sprinkler heads! We're super-spastic sprinkler heads! Cha-cha-cha-cha, chachachachacha... A little EFY cheer for ya.

EW Twilight Outtake


Entertainment Weekly did an article about the Twilight movie a few months ago - you can read the article and see the pictures here. I was reading this week's issue of EW, and they put in some "outtake" pictures from the past year - pictures they chose not to publish originally (they probably couldn't find anything newsworthy this week, so they dusted off the outtake pictures from photo shoots and said, "Let's throw these in!"). They put this picture in, and since I'm obsessed with Twilight, I thought I'd scan it and throw it on here. (By the way, this isn't a scene from the movie. It's just a creative idea for a photo shoot.) Robert Pattinson is soooooooooo cute...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Our Own Little Picasso

I thought I'd scan a few of Dylan's drawings from school to put on here. I love his drawings - they are so funny. Following is a picture of a slide in the park (I love how the slide corkscrews so tightly):

This one cracks me up. They read a book about a platypus, and then they were supposed to draw a picture of a platypus, and this is Dylan's:


Apparently platypi have enormous teeth. Dylan says that the platypus is going to eat him in that picture. :)

And a rabbit, a spider, and an ox on top of a manta ray, according to Dylan. That is one huge spider:


So funny. I love it.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Appendix



No, I didn't recently have appendicitis or have my appendix taken out, thank goodness. I'm referring to another definition for the word appendix: "supplementary material usually attached at the end of a piece of writing." But could I find a picture of a book-appendix? Nope. So you get a lovely picture of the anatomical appendix. :)

Alright. I did a tag kind of like this one a couple of weeks ago, and Em just tagged me with it, but I noticed that her tag had a few that my previous similar-tag didn't, so this post is an appendix to my previous tag:



I am: loving root beer and cream soda lately. It’s so bizarre.
I know: how to write a good essay.
I want: to buy Ben some more jeans. We bought him one pair last Saturday – hallelujah!
I have: little pimples on my arms. I learned somewhere that’s from eating too much bread? It would make sense, since I’m the Bread Queen. That’s what they call me.
I dislike: my neighbors.
I miss: my friends from college.
I feel: a little UTI-ish. I think I’m getting one, but I’m trying to “will” it back to where it came from. I really don’t feel like dealing with one of those right now.
I hear: the sound of heat coming from the wall-heater in my office.
I smell: like a man. I ran out of my deodorant and had to use Ben’s today. Ew.
I crave: sweets. “All de time,” as Sebastian on The Little Mermaid would say. Sadie’s on a Little Mermaid kick, so it's on the mind.
I cry: not nearly enough. I’m on anti-depressants, which dry up the tears. I don’t even remember the last time I cried. Um… oh, wait. I remember. When I finished the Twilight series. I was depressed that I was done reading. This is why I haven’t picked them back up again. I don’t think it’s healthy. :)
I don’t: like to run, but I still do it every day.
I forget: to remind Ben of important things. Like, right now, I’m wondering if he remembered to ask his boss for Friday off. Because I forgot to remind him. Which means there’s a 99% chance that Ben forgot to ask.

The Wonder of Language

It's been really fun to watch how quickly Dylan is learning about letters and words. He identifies letters all over the house, on labels and boxes, etc., and sounds them out. Lately, he will say something like, "Hey, Mom, what does A-B-I-T-G spell?"

"Uh, nothing..."

"Oh. Well, what does P-V-R-J-I spell?"

"Nothing..."

He thinks that, if he puts random letters together, it will automatically spell something. The other day, he kept trying to write "words" by putting random letters together:








After each "word" was written, he'd come to me and say, "So... what does this say?" And I'd say, "Nothing." Finally, I sat him down and said, "Dylan, you can't put random letters together and expect them to make a word. That's just not how it works."



So then he got an idea - he would copy "real" words off of stuff in our house. This:


is from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, one of Dylan's favorite books:

P.S. Nat wrote the cutest post about Voom on her blog last February. You should go check it out.

This is the name of our microwave:



Not sure where he got this from:



Or this:



Boy, was he pleased that he was actually writing "real" words.



Last night, Dylan goes, "Dad, what does S-O-N-Y spell?" And Ben was totally not paying any attention, so Dylan, of course, repeated himself louder: "DAD, WHAT DOES S-O-N-Y SPELL???"



Ben still didn't pay attention; he was watching stupid Family Guy (which should be called Blasphemy Central. I hate that show. I tell Ben that, one of these days, he is going to get struck by lightning while watching it). Because Ben wasn't paying attention, he figured that Dylan was spelling some random word, as usual, so Ben yells, "DYLAN, I'M SO SICK OF THIS!!! JUST BECAUSE YOU PUT LETTERS TOGETHER DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE MAKING A WORD!!!!"



I quietly put down the dish I was drying, walked into the living room, and said, "Ben, he was spelling 'Sony.' He must have gotten it off the DVD player."



Ben: "Oh."

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Multicultural FHE

Unfortunately, I'm the one that has to make sure we do Family Home Evening every week, and if I have taught Young Women's the day before, I try to do FHE on the same lesson. I'm often including flannel board stories and games and activities in my Young Women's lesson. (Young women just aren't into that "discussion mode" of spirituality yet. If the lesson says, "Discuss such-and-such," I have learned that a "discussion" entails me saying, "So, what are some characteristics we need to look for in the young men that we date?" and them staring at me. I feel like holding a pretend microphone and saying, "Is this thing on? *tap,tap,tap*... "[crickets in the background]. Yeah, so we do lots of games, stories, activities, etc. And I think they appreciate it.) So, because I have the games and activities already prepared, I try to use them in FHE the following night.

So, a couple of weeks ago, my Young Women's lesson was on how everyone in the world is our spirit brother and sister, that we all have divine qualities, etc. So I did my FHE on that the next night. I cut out those little linked paper doll things, and I had my family try to make each person on the paper doll chain look like they were from a different country, kind of to drive home that we are all "linked," even if we look different and have different cultures. These paper dolls turned out sooo funny, so I scanned them for your enjoyment.

Here's Dylan's. Sorry; these are kind of hard to see:


Mine:


Sadie's:


And Ben's:

Friday, October 17, 2008

Cute Baby Bumbs



Oh, I love my teeny little Micah. And I love his cute little baby bumb. :) And look! He's starting to get a belly!! That is a good thing.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Mer-MAN! *cough* Mer-MAN!!

The title of this post comes from Zoolander:


...which would be a way funnier movie if they took out that one yucky scene. You know the one I'm talking about.

Okay, I made sure that neither of the kids' privates are actually showing. Their legs kind of covered the private parts up. So I feel okay about posting this video, because it's so cute. Dylan came up with the idea all by himself:

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

SPT - #14



One of my new blogging friends, Janiece, is part of a little blogging group that does this thing every Tuesday called "Self-Portrait Tuesdays," or "SPT." (I can tell these are my kind of ladies, because I love initials. I make everything into initials. Another little quirk of mine. I have many.) Every Tuesday, their ringleader, Lelly, "assigns" them something to write about themselves on their blog. I adore reading Janiece's SPT's - I'm just getting to know her, so I'm gobbling up every self-portrait. She is such an interesting person!

At one point, Lelly assigned her friends to write 100 things about themselves. And, over the last few weeks, on Tuesdays, she has asked her friends to expound upon certain things from that list they made. This week, she assigned them to expound upon their #14 of their list of 100 things.

I thought, heck, I've done the "100 Things About Myself" Tag, so I might as well join "Self Portrait Tuesday" this week. Except today is Wednesday, so I'm doing SPW. I'm going to expound on my #14, which is: "I love to buy interesting postage stamps."



There are certain things that just bring a bounce to my step, and those things are buying interesting postage stamps and buying interesting checks. I love asking the postal workers what their new postage stamps are and selecting some that are really cool and interesting. Unfortunately, the last time I was in, I had all three kids with me, and there was a huge line, so I opted to buy really boring Liberty Bell stamps from the little kiosk instead. So... for the last few weeks, no bounce to my step.



Maybe I should collect stamps? Since I derive so much pleasure from interesting postage stamps? I don't know... Nat and I were talking about collections the other day - neither of us really collect anything. Nothing is compelling enough to us. Except all of our family members have decided that Nat is going to collect turtle figurines. She doesn't necessarily like turtles or anything - it all started with Mom, who got Nat a little bobble-head turtle wooden thing from some exotic vacation locale, and it grew from there. So now she has, like, seven little turtles on her piano, all bought for her from family members who have decided that she needs to collect them. When family members go on trips, they bring back turtles for Nat. I haven't ever collected anything, because there's just nothing I adore that much, you know? Like I have a friend who collects dolphins. Another friend who collects crucifix necklaces. But I just can't find anything I'm passionate enough about. And though I like interesting stamps, if I'm going to buy something fun for myself, it will be clothes, cool decor for my house, or scrapbooking stuff. And if people are going to buy me something, I'd much rather it be a cool professional photograph, or an artsy sculpture, or something. Or a magnet for my fridge. Or a cool logo t-shirt. Something a little more practical and visual than a stamp that will get shut away in a book.



Hey, I've got it! I can collect books. I feel passionately about books! Good idea, Kar. Good idea. So, Mom, if you want to get me a souvenir from your upcoming trip, you could buy me New Moon from the airport bookstore. Then my Twilight collection could be complete! (Except for a gaping hole where Midnight Sun will never be... sniff... And except for the other hole where Twilight should be, because Nat and Pete "borrowed" it, and I'm worried that they have "borrowed" it forever!!) I'm not saying you have to buy me a souvenir, Ma, but if you wanna... New Moon, baby. New Moon.

I'm an Esme... Really??

So, again, here's something from Em's blog - a personality quiz to find out which female Cullen I am. I'm Esme. Which I can't really see. I would love to be as kind, gracious, patient, etc. as Esme is, but in reality, I'm probably as impatient as Rosalie. (But not as self-centered.)

I'm a Esme! I found out through TwilightersAnonymous.com. Which Twilight Female Are You? Take the quiz and find out!
Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

Oh, wait. Just found this from that website, which describes why I'm an Esme:

You are thoughtful and care very deeply for your family. A loving home is of great
importance to you and you always try to make people feel welcome. Although you have a great capacity to love, you also have a great capacity to hurt, so at times you can be
sensitive. You're firm when you need to be, but people trust your judgment and
appreciate the kind way you always handle things.

The #1 What Not to Wear Rule

When I feed Micah at around 9:30-ish, What Not to Wear is usually on, and like I've said, I la-hove that show. And one of Stacy and Clinton's rules is to never wear logo tees. Dude, that is just one rule I have to break. I have lots of logo tees. And seriously, should a mom who gets spit up on regularly, and who does dishes a million times a day, wear a chic, tailored jacket with a silk ruffle shirt underneath it and sky-high heels? Only when she goes out with friends for lunch or something. Which I can't afford to do. Hence my abundance of t-shirts. My friend, Em, had this link on her blog - it's an online t-shirt store - and when she showed some of her favorite tees, I had to go check it out for myself. Here are my two favorite, the first from Napoleon Dynamite:

And the second from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

I just might have to save up for that second one - Ben would love it! But I need to save up to buy him some jeans, first. He patched up the knee on the only pair of jeans he has left, and he did a really bad job! I'll have to take a picture and post it. It's seriously that cringe-worthy. I should have patched his knee for him, but I had just spent a couple of hours patching the holes, on that same pair of jeans, at each of the back pocket corners, and I was sick of it. And my sewing machine was sick of it. My sewing machine is older than I am, and he is not a happy machine. He's all tense. Literally. I cannot get the tension right from the bobbin. I hate sewing...

Nunsense


Well, per my usual tradition, I'm posting this about a month too late... sigh...

Mom took Nat and I to a play called Nunsense, and it was so cute. It kind of reminded me of Forever Plaid, but with nuns. :) And Sally Struthers was in it!! Sally STRUTHERS, in little ol' Idaho Falls!! She played the Reverend Mother, and she did a great job. She is really funny. There's a part where she accidentally sniffs a mysterious substance she found in one of her students' lockers (I guess the nuns run a Catholic high school) and gets stoned, and it's a pretty funny scene. There were a lot of Catholic jokes, which totally went over my head, but it was still really well-done. And the singers were phenomenal.

I'm too young to have watched the TV show that made Sally Struthers popular, All in the Family, but Mom says it was cute. I'm a fan of her work in those infomercials in the eighties, where she was saying that you could get your degree via correspondence in seven or eight fields. Do you remember those? They were on for years. Nat and I used to be able to recite that commercial, word-for-word (we watched a little too much TV growing up), but I can't remember it now. And I'm obviously a big fan of her work in Gilmore Girls, one of my favorite TV shows of all time!!

Sally Struthers has such a raspy voice. Very distinctive. She could probably make a pretty decent living doing voice-over work. It's working for that guy who played Doc in the Back to the Future movies. He's totally a voice on a kids' show on PBS. He plays the bad guy. What is that show called?... Dang. Gilbert Gottfried is another voice on that show - he plays a parrot sidekick to these four kids who use math to solve problems. Eh. I'm a little unpracticed in PBS lately. My kids prefer Cartoon Network.

Anyways, Ma, thanks for taking us to the play. It was really enjoyable, and it was sooo nice to get away from my kids for awhile. If it wasn't for you, I don't think I would ever do anything fun!! :) And I cannot freakin' wait to go to Thriller in a week and a half!! Woot-woot!!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Not That Hard



Dylan was flexing his muscles for me the other day, and he goes, "Look, mom, I can touch my hand to my shoulder. Those muscle guys on TV can't even do that, but I can!!" I totally remember thinking that same thing when I was little! I would see, like, body-builders on TV, and they would be flexing their arms so hard, and it looked like they were just really trying to touch their shoulders, but couldn't. But I could do it, easily! I figured that I was pretty much the strongest person alive.

Monday, October 13, 2008

My Mom - A Dish

Several years ago, Ben's step-grandma wrote her memoirs and bound them into books for all of her grandkids. She included tons and tons of photos from when she was younger, and I remember once that we were looking at the photos and remarking on how beautiful she was. "Oh, I was a dish," she said, smiling.

My mom was partially in charge of her 35-year class reunion this last weekend, and she, of course, planned it to the hilt! She made these cute centerpieces:

She is a very resourceful woman - the dish part was left over from Brianna's wedding reception a couple of years ago. She was all worried about the centerpieces being good enough, and she asked me to help her send the pictures via the internet to a couple of her co-planners for approval (like they would hate such a cute centerpiece). It seems that this is one of my Official Family Jobs - helping people send pictures via e-mail. It's funny that something technological has found its way to my unofficial Family Job List, since I am a technophobe.

Do you want to know my other family jobs? I knew you did!! Here they are:
1. Scapegoat. Once, I was baby-sitting Alexis, and she was, like, nine, and she scorched the microwave when she popped popcorn. Did Lexi get into trouble? Nope. It was my fault. Even though she could read. And was nine years old.
2. Alarm clock. Natalie could not get up in the mornings. Both of our bedrooms were downstairs, so the job of getting her butt out of bed fell into my lap. I'd have to turn on the lights, open the curtains, open the window, jump on her bed, yell, turn on the radio, and pull her covers off to get her up every morning. :)
3. Soda-getter. Even though I had the longest legs, when we went on road trips, I was stuck on the half-width seat in the back, with Nat. And the cooler was always behind me, and since I also had the longest arms, it was my job to reach back and get any soda or cool snacks that anyone desired. It made me soooo car sick.
4. Listener. When anyone needs to talk or is upset, they call me. I don't mind this job. It's actually very flattering.

And now, since I have helped Gramps and my mom scan and/or send pictures via e-mail, this is another of my jobs, I guess!

While Mom was here, having me retrieve the centerpiece picture from her camera and send it, she asked me to scan this picture:


Then she had me send it to an old friend; I don't remember who. It was taken when she went to BYU-Hawaii. She's the girl on the left. Isn't she so freaking cute? She told me that she got a really tight perm before she went over there, and how ugly her hair was the whole time she was there, but I don't see any ugliness in this picture! All I see is a dish.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Dudes

During the summer of 2007, we took Dylan and Sadie to the movie, Surf's Up:


I loved the movie for several reasons. First, because the role of Cody was played by my favorite, Shia LeBoeuf:


Second, because the role of Cody's love interest, Lani, was played by Zooey Deschanel, who I also love (and who is in my favorite movie, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy):


Third, because Surf's Up is a mockumentary, in the grand old tradition of Waiting for Guffman:


And Best in Show:


(Parenthetically, Ben's and my favorite part of Best in Show is when Jennifer Coolidge's Sherri Ann Cabot:


is talking about her marriage to her octogenerian husband: "We both really like soup... and we could talk... or not talk... for hours...")

At that time, our family was in need of another beach towel, so we let Dylan pick one, since Sadie was really too young to figure out the concept of picking things. So Dylan chose a towel with Cody Maverick on it. And he called it his "Dude Towel." Apparently, he had decided that surfers are called "dudes":


Which makes sense, because surfers are always saying "Dude..." That's a reasonable assumption to make. And, by the way, one of the last times we went to the beach last year, before we moved to Idaho, we saw a few sixtyish-year-old men surfing and yelling out words like "Bro!" and "Dude!" to each other. I laughed so hard!


Anyways, last fall, our family went to the park to shoot off rockets for Family Home Evening, and there were some gothic guys hanging out on the fountain, in the area where we were shooting rockets. Here is the picture I chose to convey "gothic":




And when those quite scary guys left, Dylan goes, "Those guys were Dudes." So apparently, Dudes were now surfers and gothic guys.


I just absolutely have to insert a funny gothic-related story right here. So, back when I was a teacher, I was wearing, like, a red shirt and a jean skirt, or something. And I decided to wear red lipstick to match my red shirt. Like I would wear pink lipstick with a red shirt! I am a matchie-matchster, as you may recall. (Although now, I don't wear lipstick at all. Gloss. It's all about gloss for me now.) And I started noticing, throughout the day, that kids in the hall were staring at me and whispering behind their hands. And staring at my mouth while I taught. I kept checking to see if there was lipstick on my teeth, but I had done the "stick the finger in the mouth and fit the lips around the finger while pulling it out to make sure that no lipstick gets on the teeth" trick, and I couldn't see any lipstick or lingering broccoli or anything. So finally, sixth hour, this kid comes up to me and goes, "Mrs. Smith, are you going goth?" I looked down at my red-shirt-and-jean-skirt ensemble, then looked back up, and said, "Why would you say that, Brian?"

"Well, because of your red lipstick."

"Um, Brian, goths wear black lipstick. Not red lipstick. Black."

"Oh."

What a weirdo! I laughed so hard. This is one of the many times that my outfits were picked apart by my students. I'll have to talk about that at length in a different post.

Back to the topic at hand. Now we have come upon a third definition of a "dude" - one with a fauxhawk:

Dylan told me that one of his best friends at school is a "dude."


I said, rather confusedly, "Oh, he wears all black?"

Dylan looked at me like I was crazy: "No..."

"Oh. Well, um, does he surf??"

Dylan, again with the quizzical look: "No..."

"So what makes him a dude?"

"He has spikey hair, but only in the middle, like a line."

"Ohhhhh!"


And Dylan wants a fauxhawk so badly. The thing is, he has hair as thick as a horse's. When I try to grow it a little longer on the top, it ends up being frizzy and curly and sticking to his head. I try to put gel on it to make it "spikey," but it falls back down to the head within about a minute. I've just never seen such thick hair in my life. When I pour water on his head when I give him baths, the water slicks right off of it, like water beading up and sliding harmlessly off a duck's back. So Dylan's dream of being a dude is just not going to happen, not at my hands, at least. Because I have better things to do than try to make a course-haired fauxhawk. He can figure it out when he's old enough to do his own hair. :)