Category: Uncategorized (Page 19 of 118)

Ryan and I had the opportunity a little while ago to go to see Mary Poppins when it was on a stop in SLC.

Well, more true would be that while Ryan was traveling extensively, I happened upon a discount code for tickets and decided that I was going to see Mary Poppins, whether or not he wanted to come with me. While I was on the computer looking up ticket prices and seat location, Ryan was on the other side of the world in Singapore, and had just had dinner with my old friend. We had this little exchange on facebook.

Ken: We have your husband. If you want to see him alive again, send $14.32 in unmarked bills and coins to my Swiss bank account. You will actually have to open the account first, then make the deposit. Please also send my new account number. Thanks.

Paige Coleman Erickson That’s a pretty tough demand. Can I just send you some free papa murphy’s pizza coupons instead?

Ken Clayton Hmm…on second thought maybe we’ll just let him go. We don’t need another mouth to feed and you need your computer fixed.

Paige Coleman Erickson Hey, tell him I’m buying Mary Poppins tickets for next Saturday night. If he’s not interested, I’ll find a date.

Ken Clayton He says it depends on who is staging Mary Poppins.

Paige Coleman Erickson What? at the capitol theater. Broadway touring group.

Ken Clayton Believe it or not, he is fine with that. He didn’t want to end up at some ward play (apparently he never saw the fine production values in our 8th ward road show).

Paige Coleman Erickson Hello. Li’l Abner! Tell him how awesome THAT show was.

Ken Clayton I remember Abner…anyway, it sounds like you and Ryan have a big plans for next Saturday night. Now put away your little black book.

Paige Coleman Erickson What time is it there, anyway?

Ken Clayton Just returned your husband to hotel. It’s 10:45pm now, he has taxi picking him up at 4:00am. Going to be a short night for him.

Paige Coleman Erickson Oh, he can sleep on the plane (s).

(then another old friend from my home ward, Bonnie, chimed in)

Bonnie Clark Despain This is so fun. Think it would have happened without FB? New connections so easily made.

(then one of my bell friends, Brittany added her comment)

Brittany Brower Bennett Sorry to intrude, but this was hilarious!!!!

Ken Clayton ?@Brittany – if you think this was hilarious, you should see our live show!

Anyway, it was a funny exchange through Ken, through facebook. But I bought tickets, and told him that if he didn’t want to go, I would find a date. But he was ok to go. So, we had John’s baptism, then a BYU game, and then we went to Mary Poppins.

First we had to play in the “art” next door.

The show was FABULOUS! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, to be more precise. The dancing, the music, the special effects–it was all super! In fact, I need a magical nanny to help my kids when they are naughty.

In fact, I would have loved to take all the kids, because I’m sure they would love it, too! Maybe if I won the tickets. Seven of them. Right.

Today I entered the rank of the “employed”.

Yes, I jumped through all the hoops required by Alpine School District and Kelly Services, and signed up to sub. I actually would prefer to work just at my kids’ elementary school, but I may have to branch out from that if I want to work more.

Today I did first grade.

It was exhausting. I didn’t even do the whole day, either. Just half day. Still exhausting. But kind of fun, as well. Reading, writer’s workshop, recess duty, spelling. And those kids go to the bathroom about a MILLION times a day. Seriously! Not sure if they were taking advantage of the sub, or if they really ALL need to go to the bathroom two times in a 3 hour period. I did remind them that recess is a really good time to go and use the bathroom, but who am I kidding? What kid wants to waste his 10 minutes of recess in the bathroom? I feel like I was talking constantly, repeating the same thing over and over and over. Some of these kids couldn’t even copy a sentence off the board, and others were fine writing the required three sentences about “I would walk my neighbor’s dog every day because…”

I remember why I wanted to go into teaching when the kids came up and gave me a hug at the end of the day. One cute little boy asked if he could call me Mrs. M. Mrs M? My name is Erickson. Oh, can I call you Mrs. E, then? I don’t have a problem with that. Mrs. E it is.

I already know a lot of the kids at the school, or I know their parents. They recognize me from PTA, and that helps. I also see a lot of kids from primary, and they say, “I know you from CHURCH!” It helps.

Tomorrow I signed up to teach at the Junior High. When the job came up, it was listed as “German”. Cool! I can teach German. But when I told my kids I was subbing for Mrs. Mapin, they said, “Doesn’t she teach History?” and “Yeah, I liked her. I had her for Geography.” History? Geography? Not what I was signing up for!!! But I’m committed now, so I’ll have to go and make the best of it.

No, I don’t want to make this a full time gig. I really am already WAY too busy to handle very much more on my plate. I have the big school walk-a-thon next Friday, and I’m writing the Primary Program, etc, etc. But I do think I would enjoy one or two days a week.

***Well, day two was ALSO exhausting, but good. I was pleased to be teaching German 3 classes of German and only one dreaded Geography class. The kids would walk in and say, “A SUB! Hey, do you speak German?” When I would answer “Ja,” they said conspiratorially, “the last sub didn’t speak German at ALL.” I was also pleasantly surprised that substitutes get free lunch from the cafeteria at this junior high, and teachers can jump the line. All in all, pretty good day.***

Husband, the day after returning from another business trip, called to let me know he thought he left his passport in the pocket of his tan shorts.

“You mean the tan shorts that I JUST put into the dryer?” I asked.
(long pause)
“Yep, those tan shorts.”

Sure enough, there it was in his lower pocket. I think you can still read all the numbers. Maybe if I just flatten it out to dry…. That’s what you get for having an incredibly efficient wife who starts the laundry right away on a Monday morning. Oops.

Well, we flattened and we dried, but it doesn’t look too official. He looked it up and if there is water damage, that’s pretty much a “get a new passport” sign.

I keep apologizing for washing his passport, and he just said, “That picture made me look like a terrorist, anyway.”

Hopefully work can pay for the next one, since all the travel he’s doing is for work, not pleasure.

Last week when hubby was in Singapore for work, I managed to hook him up with an old friend of mine, who is also living in Singapore with his family right now. I’m sure it was the tiniest bit awkward, since I haven’t seen this friend in at least 10 years, and Ryan’s only met him once or twice. But, being in a foreign country maybe makes Americans want to stick together, and I was glad that Ken and Angie invited Ryan over for dinner.

However, what do two people talk about who only really have one person in common? They talked about me.

A little background on Ken. Ken was in my ward growing up, and once he skipped a grade, he was in my class about every year. And since it seems we always had to sit alphabetically, it went “Coleman (me), Clayton (Ken), then Chaffin (my friend Stacie).” I don’t know how many years Ken had to sit in between me and Stacie, but it was pretty often. So, he got to be the note passer, the talk around-er, AND, we would also play with him. He entertained my husband with stories of how we would drag him into our recess games, our little plays, and other such nonsense. I do vaguely remember that he would sometimes play “Charlie’s Angel’s with us”. No, he didn’t get to do the exciting action that we got to do. He played Bosley and got to tell us our assignments (of course he had to be Bosley–he was a boy). Apparently (and I really don’t remember this, but it does sound like something we would do), he was attempting to do a trick on the monkey bars called the ‘penny drop’. You hang upside down, flip over and land on your feet. It didn’t go so well for Ken, and we renamed the trick “the Kenny flop”.

I stick to my story that I have NO MEMORY of teasing him that way.

But it’s funny, right?

If he can still retell the story some 30 years later, I worry that I destroyed the poor boy’s self esteem. Did he have confidence issues and nightmares about the “Kenny flop”?

I’m a bad person.

No, not a bad person, just a tease. But as my favorite children book tells me, “teasing isn’t nice.”

It probably made him a stronger person, ready to face junior high and high school. And we played with him, didn’t we? It’s not like we were bullying the kid.

**

In other news, Ryan did a “sleep study” last night. Maybe they should call it a “toss and turn study”. He says it’s the WORST night’s sleep he’s EVER had. And to top it off, he had to go to the dentist this morning. My guess is he’ll spend the rest of the day sleeping. Poor guy.

**

And to my friends in Arizona, you just have to read THIS POST. Or even if you don’t live in Arizona, it’s still funny.

**

Another friend posted all about our Bells on Temple Square summer party. I’ll just link you to BRITTANY’S post instead of writing about it myself. Hey, she included pictures of us and everything!

**

I’m off now to make cookies, supervise the playground bark delivery, clean the kitchen, and take care of stapling about 400 more PTA papers together. John’s birthday is tomorrow, and his baptism is on Saturday! Exciting times around here!

Have a GREAT day!

I tried to take the traditional first day of school pictures of my kids. They were less than successful. They aren’t all horrible.

But I guess that’s just how it goes. So far school has been going well, although I wonder if Cole can really handle 4 AP classes and Megan can really handle 2 art classes as well as their other stuff AND early morning seminary.

Natalie is enjoying choir and drama, not so thrilled about the other classes, although she says her English teacher is hilarious (always a plus). Jenna’s teacher already loves her (no surprise there) and John, while he likes his teacher, is staying home sick today. Some kind of fever last night and this morning.

But the weather is starting to cool off, thankfully, so it’s only supposed to be in the high 80s today instead of the high 90s like it’s been, and I am getting stuff done for my PTA job. Ryan’s back in town and he is fixing up my computer for me.

And this week we’re gearing up for a special birthday and baptism! So exciting stuff.

I did something today that I haven’t done in roughly 15 years. And no, it wasn’t exercise and it wasn’t diet (how rude of you to even think that!), and it wasn’t even clean the basement. We haven’t even lived in this house for more than 10 years, so it can’t have been THAT long since it was cleaned. Although I do admit that there are boxes that haven’t really been gone through at all since we moved into the house. But that’s a project for another day (or month).

With school starting next week, and my youngest going into 2nd grade (GASP! Can that be true? Where did the time go? How did my baby get to be that old? I may just start to cry right here! And don’t even get me started about his BAPTISM coming up next month!), I figured it might be time to start thinking about earning some kind of income. Not like a “what do I want to be when I grow up?” kind of thing, but what can I do for a few hours a week just to earn a little extra money and maybe contribute to the family finances for once. It’s not like people are clamoring for my specific set of skills. “Let’s see….I think we should hire an overweight 40 something stay at home mom who really likes to start projects but isn’t so great on finishing them. Oh yeah, she should also be someone who has WAY too many hobbies and interests and activities going on.” I haven’t been receiving phone calls from any headhunters.

But I thought, where do I spend a lot of my time? At the kids’ schools, specifically the elementary school. Why not combine the two, and do some substitute teaching? I do have a degree in Elementary ed, after all. So I decided to sign up to sub. Turns out it isn’t so easy to ‘just sign up’ to sub anymore. Kelly temp services is now in charge of all the substitute teachers in my area, and it’s a WHOLE lot of hoops to jump through. Forms declaring I’m a citizen, online applications, letters of recommendations (from my past employers, I don’t think so. I had to go with PTA people, since I haven’t had a job since Megan was born), then I had to go to PROVO (and you’ll remember how much I LOVE driving to Provo, right?) for an interview, where there was more paperwork and very few questions. Then we watched a little video on being an effective substitute teacher and gave them two forms of id and signed a form that allowed them to do a background check. Then I have to go get fingerprinted (and have the opportunity to pay $40 to do so) and come back to Provo next week for an orientation.

The more I get into this the more I’m thinking that I want less and less to actually enter the work force. I have PLENTY to do to keep me busy around here. I’m already heavily involved in PTA, and I don’t ever really get my housework done. Why would I want to go and substitute teach and cause myself MORE stress?

My ice maker got all frozen up and stuck, and we haven’t gotten it fixed yet. But life without ice? Unthinkable. I don’t even want to drink any water if I can’t have it cold and with ice. I’ve started keeping a water container or two in the fridge to keep my water cold, but it just isn’t enough. So, I went over to my next door neighbors and asked for….ice. I got a gallon ziplock and filled it with ice. Now I can just get a few cubes out. I just sent my daughter over for ice again. ….ahhhhhh…..

How many borrowings of ice do you think is too many?

Natalie has wanted to have a summer party with her friends for a while, so this week I told her let’s just do it. She is going to Jr. High this year, and the majority of her friends will not be in the same school with her. She has no trouble making friends, so I am not worried about her at all, but it’s still a difficult transition. So, she called all her friends, and I think we’ve got 13 girls here right now. I guess it’s the end of the summer and everyone has finished vacationing and are just happy to send their loud, obnoxious girls somewhere else for the afternoon.

They played Encore all together, and then they broke up into small groups to play more games. One group played Apples to Apples at the table, one group played Guillotine in the front room, and another group played an outside game in the front yard.

And they ALL brought food. I think we have enough snacks there for all of them.

Me? I’m on damage control. Not entertainment or even food. It’s not a bad gig. Because it’s always a party around here.