Author: Superpaige (Page 160 of 180)

Well, Megan’s Surprise party went quite well, if I do say so myself. I had told her friends to come in the garage at 5:15, and then when they were all there, I asked Megan to go and get something out of the garage for me. She went out there, and her friends jumped out and yelled “SURPRISE!”, and Megan, not being a child of great emotion, said, “hi.”

But she seemed to actually enjoy the party. so I hope I’ve done well. As far as parties go, this one was pretty easy once we got started. We played a little game, and then I took them down in the scary, disasterly messy basement (which I didn’t even TRY to clean up–yes, I’m that much of a pig) and let them all play step mania, which they really liked. Then I just had to wait for the Pizza guy to come, call them up all to eat pizza (the cheers went up to the ceiling on that one) and have root beer and creme soda. After they ate their fill, Megan opened up her presents.

And since I had bought “The Chronicles of Narnia” yesterday for her birthday, we opened it up and let the kids watch it. We took a little break for cake, and that was pretty much it. Some of the girls got bored with the movie and wanted to play outside, so I let them do that. I ended up taking them home about 8:30, and I think they all had a fun time.

And this morning Megan told me thanks for her party, so I guess she had fun, too.

And the good thing is, that after the bridal shower that’s here this Saturday (which I haven’t even starte on), I’ll be done with parties–for a little while, at least.

Megan is 10 today–again I can hardly believe it. She’s a great girl with lots of spunk and she keeps it interesting around here. She is a talented artist, a great soccer player, and does well in school. She helps out with her younger brother and sisters, keeps Cole moving in the morning, and always seems to have plenty of money. If she practiced the piano without a fuss and cut the backtalk, she’d be perfect!

She could never decide what she wanted to do for her birthday (maybe I gave her too many options), so on Sunday I decided we would throw a surprise party for her. I called 9 of her friends, and they should be coming over around 5. We’ll surprise Megan, do some step mania, play a couple of low-key games, have pizza, open presents and watch the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which I bought today. I hope she likes it!

I had this dream (oh, no, not another weird dream) that was so real I just have to share it. My friends and I were going to start up a quilting group. Originally we had planned to go to Juno, Alaska for a month to quilt, but realized that wouldn’t work. So, we started out meeting at Lisa’s parent’s house. Her mom and sister Susan were there, too, and teaching us the basics of quilting. The deal was, we each had to make our own quilt top (pieced together, of course), and then we would get together as often as possible to quilt them. We were going to donate them to a church relief mission that would auction them off to raise money for a special project in Africa.

One day while we were together, Charri had brought a whole bunch of old things that we had all given her for Christmas or Birthday presents YEARS ago. She wanted us to sign the bottom and put the date if we could remember what year it had been. She had boxes of stupid silly gifts that we had bought for her (ceramic penquins was one I remember) or made for her. We all laughed at the stupidity and total uselessness of these gifts that we had been so proud to give her, and laughed and wondered more at the fact that she still had them.

When I woke up, I was still in the middle of this dream, so I don’t know if we ever accomplished great things and made beautiful quilts, but I will assume we did. It just made me so thankful that I have had a wonderful circle of friends who stuck by me through all the years (some of them for over 30!) and that I can still count them as friends today! Oh how lucky I am!

Ok, everyone, *April Fools* on that last post. It’s nice to know I can still shock a few people, and that you would miss me if I moved. It was fun to see the reactions that one got. Ryan was more excited than I was if I fooled anyone. He probably checked the blog 8 or 9 times in the past two days and would tell me whenever it got a new comment. In all fairness, Melinda posted a disbelief comment 1st, but I deleted it because I wanted to give the rest of you a chance to be fooled. So, Happy April Fools to all of you.

In other news, because of daylight savings time, John waited until 7:20 (instead of the usual 6 something) to come into bed and hold mom’s hair this morning. It’s kind of sweet, the little ritual he’s got going. He wakes up and comes immediately into our bed. He climbs into the middle of the bed, pushes Dad aside if he’s in his way, asks me to turn over if I don’t have my back to him, snuggles up close and plays with my hair. He’s a squirmy kid, though, so it’s not like I can sleep through it, but it’s kind of a sweet way to wake up. Even sweeter if it’s not in the 6:00 hour!

Well, it’s official.

Ryan has been frequently traveling to Las Vegas to help some company with their equipment and set up. He’s probably been 4 times in the last two months. Well, this company decided they would like Ryan to be there a little bit more often, and offered him a job as their systems manager.

After a lot of discussion and much back and forth, he’s decided to accept their offer. That means we’ll be soon moving to Las Vegas. (Try to contain your cheers and excitement!) Ryan will start the end of April, and do the commute thing. I think he can go down on Monday and come home by Friday. We’ll be going down after Easter to find a place, and put our house up for sale. Ryan’s got a good friend who lives in Summerlin, which is just outside of Las Vegas, and we’re going to look for a house around there. We won’t have our big yard anymore, but who wants to do yardwork in Las Vegas in the summer. Maybe we’ll get something with a pool, instead.

We won’t be moving until after school is out for sure, and I’ve got my Bells concert June 2nd and 3rd. I’m so sad to have to leave the Bell Choir, but I’m so absolutely grateful that I had this marvelous opportunity for the past year. I’ve made so many new friends and can’t even say in words how much I’ve grown musically.

I know this is a Shock to you. It was a total shock to me, too. I haven’t mentioned anything on here because we were quite up in the air about the whole thing, and didn’t want to say anything until we knew for sure. I mean, we’re not the kind of people who just pick up and move every couple of years like *some people* we know (yes, you know who you are–and I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing!).

We’ve prayed about it and feel good about it. It will be extremely hard leaving our wonderful neighborhood and being so close to family and friends, but now you’ll have a place to stop and visit on your way to Disneyland, right?

You know it’s finally spring when…

**Soccer starts. Even though I’ve only got two kids in soccer this year, I really dread it. For some reason those extra two hours of practice and two games a week just push me over the edge of my driving kids here and there sanity. Thankfully it’s not all year.

**Birthdays. Cole and Megan’s birthdays are 9 days apart, so for a while now we’re in all birthday frenzy mode (if only Megan would decide what it is she would like to do for her birthday, so I can get started on the planning).

**General Conference. I’ve been given 4 tickets to conference this year, so I’m thrilled to take Cole and Megan and Ryan to the Sunday afternoon session. That is if I figure out what to do with the smaller kids.

**Out comes the self tanner. Since I have no natural color to my skin, I am forced to apply my color from a tube. I like the new banana boat self tanner because it is really subtle. If you happen to put it on streaky, it won’t matter (unlike the nutregena foam that I was using last year). The downside of that, however, is that I don’t know if I will ever look any tanner, but we’ll see.

** Out come the capri pants. I actually wore capri pants for the first time on Monday (that’s why I needed the self tanner).

**I begin the search for the perfect sandals to wear all summer. I usually end up buying 2 or 3 pairs of sandals before I find a winner. I still wear the other ones, just not every day.

**I feel the urge to go outside and pull weeds. I did some weeding on Monday, used up the last of my Preen, so I’ve got to get some more, and shredded my hands trying to pull out some obnoxious reed things.

**I also feel the urge to throw things out–watch out, kids, Mom’s going to be going through your closets–I think I’ll start with the 87 pairs of shoes and 28 coats in the mudroom.

**It rains. A lot.

**And, my favorite, the daffodils pop up; and soon (if the deer haven’t totally eaten them) we’ll have tulips.

Well, after all my blabbering on about these singing telegrams, today is finally the day. I’ve written 5 different songs, and I have three duets (thanks to the moms who sing!) and two groups of 6th graders (about 7 in each group) to sing. I’m hoping that everyone does what they are supposed to do and every teacher and member of the staff gets sung to.

I can’t possibly be old enough to have a 12 year old. But for some reason, my oldest child insists on getting older. Cole is a wonderful boy and we are so very proud of him. We love how much he’s learning and growing, and always so nice to his sisters

This weekend has been one constant party for Cole. It started with grandparent’s day at school on Friday, where the 6th grade hosted a day for grandparents to come and see what they are doing. There were activities and treats, and Ryan’s parents enjoyed coming to see Cole’s work at school.

As soon he came home from school, we had to get him ready for his scout campout. He and the two other boys in his troup, plus some leaders and one dad, went to Willow Park in Lehi for their “winter/spring campout”. I’m glad they waited until a warm weekend, so I wouldn’t quite so much. He made it home just fine, though, Saturday around noon.

Saturday evening, he had his bowling birthday party. Eight of his friends came, we played games, opened presents, and had a bowling lane cake (Here’s Paige’s Version), and then Ryan (what a stud) took them bowling. They had a great time! Cole even got his own bowling pin for all his friends to sign and bring home.

Today was his actual birthday, and he got set apart as a deacon and recieved the priesthood, which was a neat experience. His grandparents came for that and stayed for dinner. So, now we’re a bit partied out, but no–Megan’s birthay is in another week, and we’d better hurry up and figure out what we’re doing for that!

Ok, I think I have sung the praises of Kohl’s department store before, but let me just elaborate. I stopped in to Kohl’s yesterday, and lo and behold, I see the clearance racks. Not just 30% or 50% off–no, it’s 80% off! I found a pair of jeans for $4.47! I picked up this darling jacket that had an original price tag of $60, which ended up being less than $8, so I had to get it. Even though John lost interest in the fun little shopping cart stroller and ended up running around hiding in the clothing racks with Jenna, I managed to find several WAY cute items for WAY cheap! We did have a little bit of drama in the dressing room, when John insisted on opening the door and running out while I’m standing there in my underwear, but I managed to muscle him back in and stand in front of the door so he couldn’t open it again until I was dressed.

But here’s the kicker, they don’t just have awesome sales, they have friendly and helpful sales people. I had a coupon for a free trial of lipstick, and since no one was at the makeup counter to help me, I just picked one out and brought it to the check-out. She didn’t know how to use that particular coupon, so she asked someone else, who told her to wait until the end, and then scan it. So, she rang up all my stuff, then scanned the coupon. It still wasn’t working, so she called someone, who told her how to do it. When it still wasn’t wroking, she read the fine print on the coupon (which I hadn’t done) and it said you would get a “generous 4 week sample of the lipstick”, not a free lipstick. Ok, I didn’t want to pay $16 for a lipstick when I had just found all these bargains, so I asked her to take that one off. Since she had waited until the end of the transaction, the lipstick couldn’t be voided, so she had to void the whole thing and start over. Ok. No problem. The manager lady who came over to help her and look at the coupon then said, “Well, since this is taking so long, we’ll just let you have the lipstick anyway.” How nice is that?

So, after using my 15% off coupon that had come in the mail, my total was $60.92. I couldn’t believe it! And that was for 2 necklaces, 2 pairs of pants, 3 shirts and a jacket, and a photo album (not on clearance, but it will make a nice birthday present for a certain daughter who’s having a birthday soon!). I love Kohl’s!

****************

I realized later, when looking at my reciept in disbelief, that one reason the total was so cheap was that when she re-scanned everything to ring it up again, my two children were each holding a stuffed animal that they had picked out. They got rung up the first time, but since they wanted to hold them instead of putting them in the bag, they didn’t get scanned the second time. Oops. I owe Kohls’ another 10 bucks. No problem, I’ll just have to go back (preferrably without those annoying children).