Author: Superpaige (Page 101 of 180)

Ryan told me last week that some people from his office were going to Chicago to film a segment for the Oprah show. I of course tried to weasel my way into a trip, because it’s been my long-standing goal to see the Oprah show in person. I almost made it when we lived in Illinois, but that was when that whole mad cow thing was going on, and unfortunatly, Oprah was in Texas. So, no, I haven’t been to the Oprah show, but one day I will! And neither has Ryan. He wasn’t one of the people who went to Chicago, but his company, Control 4 will be featured on the Oprah show today.

Control4 was highlighted by The Oprah Winfrey Show as an affordable, whole home automation system. The segment was filmed earlier this week and we were just notified that the segment will be aired on Friday, April 25, 2008, check your local listing for time and channel information.

* IP Camera showing the ability to see your home or another room when you are not there
* All off button. Demonstrating the ability to push one button that will shut off virtually anything you want before you go to bed or leave your home.
* Multi-room Music. Control4 demonstrated how you can simply listen to your music throughout your home.

And if Oprah likes something, you know what kind of an endorsement that is? Wow! So, you know what I’ll be doing today at 4:00. If I remember. But my tv will remember, even if I don’t.

I have a problem. I’ll admit it. You know those happy little yellow “flowers” that seem to be popping up in everyone’s yard right about now? Well, I hate them.

Oh, the dreaded dandelion! Or, as I just learned from Wikipedia, it’s a “members of the genus Taraxacum, a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae.” Thank you, Wikipedia. I don’t really care what they are called, I just don’t want them in my yard.

I didn’t really care so much about the dandelions until we moved here to this neighborhood. It’s a neighborhood full of landscapers, retired men who have too much time on their hands, and lawn obsessed people. Seriously. Our former next door neighbor used to mow his lawn at least twice a week, just because he liked to. I just found out that my friend and neighbor has a veritable greenhouse in her family room, where she’s growing hundreds of flowers and plants from seeds and from single leaves of different plants. Everyone has large lots that look like parks. Some of these people have easily put 30K into their yards. How can we possibly compete with that?

So, when I see a dandelion in my yard, instead of thinking, “oh, look at the cute little dandelions”, I think, “flip, there’s another of those scourge of the earth dandelions, which will soon be ALL over my yard, and then everyone will think we are the white trash neighbors and they will hate us.” I’m not even exaggerating here. Last year when it was time for Women’s conference, I mentioned to my friend that I was looking for a class titled “Just because you have a few dandelions, that does not make you white trash“. She laughed and said how funny I was, but I wasn’t joking. Somehow my self-esteem is tied up with the state of my yard. When really, it shouldn’t bother my self-esteem if we have a few weeds. The lawn is technically not even my jurisdiction around here. Ryan does the lawn care, ferilization, and the whole sprinking system, and I am in charge of all the flower beds, pots and hanging baskets. Together we are supposed to tend the garden, but we both tend to drop the ball on that one–but that’s another subject for some other day. So if we have a few little dandelions, it should reflect poorly upon my husband, and not me, right? Tell my over-imaginative brain.

So yesterday, when the kids came home from school, I offered them a penny per dandelion head. Not the whole disgusting plant, mind you, just the cheery yellow flowery parts. I know this isn’t getting the whole weed, but they don’t want to be out there with diggers, and I don’t have time to spray every one of them at this moment. Besides, if you get the flowery parts, they won’t send out all their horribly invasive seeds, creating more and more and more and more noxious weeds. So, always interested in an easy and fun way to make money, my girls set off to find and pick as many dandelion flowers as they could. After about a half an hour, one of them came in and asked if they could pick from the neighbor’s yard, too. Hmmm. On the one hand, I don’t really care if my neighbor has dandelions. In fact, if they have some, and I don’t, then that should kind of make my yard look better, right? And why should I pay my children to destroy the dandelions from their yard? On the other hand, if their dandelions ripen and spew forth their hideous seeds, then they will most likely land in my yard and cause us to have more dandelions. “Ok,” I said, “you can pick from the neighbor’s yard, too.” Aren’t I generous?

At the end of the picking time, when they couldn’t find any more dandelions to pick, like any good bounty hunter, they counted up their crop. With chalk circles and tally marks, they each figured out how many they had harvested. Jenna had 262, Natalie had 289, and Megan had 305. At one cent each, that will run me about $8.56. Well worth it. The kids had a little math experience, plus an easy way to make a couple of bucks fast, and I can assuage my fragile self-esteem.

I know, I know. I told you I had a problem, and admitting it is the first step to recovery, right? That, and I might just call Chem-lawn.

–You made poops in the potty?! That’s amazing!

–You need lotion on those hands, or your hands will get so dry they might just fall off. And then how would you write with no hands, only little stumps?

–Put that down! You don’t have to read EVERY single thing you see.

–What caller am I?

–I do not have your shin guards.

–Does anyone know where the vacuum stopped?

–If I let you quit piano lessons, then you would come to me when you are 25 and say, “Mom, why did you let me quit piano lessons? I hate you for letting me quit!”

–Those are brand new pants! Did you have to slide in them and get grass stains on the knees?

–I’m going to race you to the potty.

–Why are there grapes on the floor?

–Out came the tooth, the wibbley, wobbley tooth…

–I have to take Megan to soccer. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.

–I’m sorry that your shoes are frozen. Maybe you shouldn’t leave them out by the trampoline .

–I don’t care if you’re wet. You can’t just take any towel you feel like taking.

–How many times do we wear our underwear? That’s right, ONCE. We’re not going to save the planet any by wearing our underwear for days at a time.

–I’m so sorry. Where does it hurt? Let me give you kisses.

–Food. We’re having FOOD.

–I love you, too.

–If you eat the last of something, what do you do with the box? Leave it in the pantry? I don’t think so.

–Please move on to another song.

–Just use someone else’s socks.

–Do you need some help with that?

–I think that shirt might be on backwards.

–Awesome job!

–Did you do your homework?

–Why do you say one thing and powerschool says another?

–Because I’m trying to train you to be a good babysitter, that’s why.

Saturday marked the beginning of THE GARAGE SALE SEASON. To celebrate, and since there was no soccer this week, I set out early in search of the elusive and timid early season garage sale. Not one to really look in the paper, I tend to favor the old “drive around and look for signs” approach. Sometimes it works better than others. It was 7:50 and I saw a sign! It said Yard sale 8-1, but it was almost 8, so I turned in and found the sale. What? Lawnmowers and horse tack? That’s not the sale for me. I didn’t even get out of the car.

I ventured south, and lo and behold, I saw a GREAT sign, but where are the arrows, people? I can’t read your tiny address when I’m going by at 40 mph! Arrows!! So, after taking the roundabout way to get there, I found the garage sale. I immediately picked up a cute little “carved” bear, that’s not really carved and not really made of wood. But he’s cute, and he’s $1, and he’s going to enjoy being at my house. Nothing else there except a really cool hot pink chair from the 1940’s, but she only wanted to sell it WITH the couch as a set, and I’m not buying a hot pink couch with one foot missing. My husband would KILL me if I hauled that thing home.

After much more driving around, being fooled by signs that looked like they could possibly be garage sale signs, but were really “aeration” signs or those red flags that people can use when crossing the street, I found about 4 more garage sales. I ended up buying bunch of clothes for John at 25 cents each, some shoes for Cole, and a baseball glove that will fit John or Jenna. I also found a dress that Natalie wanted, but it fit Jenna (and has a small rip I need to repair), a small four wheeler and rider for John to use as a potty prize, and a cars book.

Not the greatest haul for two hours on a Saturday, but I spent less than $8, and I got away from the little people for a couple of hours. But it’s the start of the fun garage sale season that will last for about the next 6 months, and I’m sure I’ll score some great finds–eventually.

Some days there’s just not that much to blog about, you know? That is, unless you want to hear about the yucky smelling dish towel that I discovered in my sink, or my opinion on Dancing with the Stars this week, or the fact that I discovered a nice green dot of “facial mask” that I put on my face last night to dry up a huge zit. I discovered that I still had green on my face AFTER I went and worked out at Curves this morning. But I’m sure you all have done something like that before, right? Or I could go on about how my kids aren’t used to all this free time and they end up picking fights with each other. But none of that stuff is blogworthy today.

So I wanted to just give a little shout out for my awesome hubby. He’ll be totally shocked reading this, by the way, since it’s not his birthday or our anniversary or father’s day or anything, so why would I write about him? Because I want to, that’s why.

Last week he had a frustrating week at work. I guess it was bug finding week, and he worked for four days trying to find a certain bug and fix it. Four days! And when he finally found it, I guess fixing it consisted of putting in two more back slashes into a certain line of code. When he told me about it, he said, “So, my total amount of work for the past four days consists of two characters. That’s half a character per day.” I told him I was so sorry that work was frustrating, but he should blog about it! That’s what I do with all the crappy stuff that happens to me–it gives me something to blog about, right? Too bad he doesn’t have a blog.

Jenna wrote him a note the other day and left it for him…where? On his computer. Since it’s not Too personal, I think I’ll share it. She wrote:

Dear Dad,
Will we do the mini goat some day?
How was work? Was it bad or good?
I love you up to the moon and back down 900000 times.
Your a fun day to have.
Did you play card games with your parents when you were little? How long are you growing your beard? I like your beard, dont shave it!
Pleas right back.
Love, Jenna
xxoooxxxooooxxxooo

How sweet is that?

He’s also amazingly creative when it comes to fixing things. A friend from the ward brought over her laptop that had given up the ghost. It wouldn’t even boot up, it was that far gone. She was just sick that she hadn’t backed up her pictures, and they were all on that laptop. Well, Ryan tried everything he could to get it to boot up, and nothing worked. The hard drive was just dead. But then in doing some research, he read somewhere that if you freeze a hard drive, it might just make it work enough to get some information off of it. Freeze a hard drive? Who thinks up these things?
‘

So, he stuck the thing in a baggie, then froze it for a couple of hours. Then, to keep it frozen, he stuck that baggie into a bowl of ice, and hooked it up. Crazy, right? Well, here’s a picture or two to show you I’m not making this up.

And by working his magic, he was able to recover all of her photos from her dead laptop. Amazing, isn’t he? So, file that away in your “useless knowledge” file, and be glad that there are people somewhere in the world who care enough to try weird and crazy things to recover their files. And one of them is my husband.

I told you how excited I was about my new Roomba vacuum, right? Now I can go back to cleaning my floors more than once a week (just kidding, I really do clean more than once a week). But this new roomba has some “new and improved” features that I’m not so sure about.
I push the little start button, for example, and the roomba says to me (yes, it talks!) “Please remove and clean roomba’s brushes.”

Um, excuse me? You are a vacuum. A tool. I don’t want you telling me what to do, here, just get busy and clean the floor!

But what do I do? I remove and clean the brushes. I don’t want to make it mad at me and not do any work, now do I?

So I don’t know if I like the “talking back” feature. I get enough of that from my kids, for heaven’s sake. Next thing you know, I’ll push start to get it to vacuum, and it’ll start giving me wardrobe advice, “Are you really going to wear that shirt with those pants? Did you not have time to do your hair this morning?”

All right, already! Shut up and vacuum!

I set up a puzzle on Saturday afternoon. Just something to do with our hands while we were listening to general conference. I imagined us working on it together as a family and rejoicing when we finished it together.
In reality, it was too hard for most of the kids, and Megan soon lost interest. So, it was me doing a puzzle on Saturday. And I soon became a little obsessed. When Ryan and Cole went to the preisthood session, I fed the kids dinner, but I stayed at the counter working on the puzzle. After they ate, the kids wanted to play Wii. Fine. I’m working on a puzzle.

Sunday we didn’t have any time to work on the puzzle, since we had to get everyone ready, listen to the am session, and then we went up and attended the pm session in the conference center. It was a wonderful experience, even with three kids.

But Monday, after I exercised, that puzzle was still there. On the counter. I worked on it for a while, and then Monday night even Ryan caught the puzzle bug and spent a couple of hours on the puzzle after I went to bed.

On Tuesday, I go the kids off to school, exercised, and then sat down at the counter to work on the puzzle for a minute or two. John wanted to start a movie, and he chose ‘Over the Hedge’. About halfway through the movie, he wanted to sit on my lap and “help” do the puzzle. So, I let him help. I would search and search and find where a piece would go, then he would put it in. It was actually fun. A friend called me at around 11:15, and I realized I had been working on that puzzle for almost two hours. Oh, let me just take a shower, and then we can get the boys together to play. How embarrassing! 11:00 and I’m still in my work-out clothes working on a puzzle! But I was almost done! Tuesday afternoon when Cole came home, he and I finished the last few pieces of the puzzle. Except for one piece, which is missing somewhere. Hooray! The puzzle is done!

Off Cole went to piano lessons, and I went upstairs for something or other. When I came back into the kitchen, the puzzle was again in pieces. It hadn’t even been completed long enough for me to take a picture. I couldn’t believe it! The little culprit was sitting right there in the kitchen. “John,” I asked, “what happened to this puzzle?” “I don’t know,” he said.

ARRG!

Since the puzzle wasn’t completely destroyed, and since it’s always easier to do a puzzle the second time, some of the kids started working on putting it back together. I didn’t join them. I already did that puzzle, once, I’m thinking, I don’t really have the time to devote to completing it again. Today, sick of the puzzle and wanting my counter back, I put the whole thing back in the box. Back into the closet it will go, not to be looked at for at least another six months.

“There is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood.” ~ M. Russell Ballard

His was one of my favorite talks on Sunday.