Category: Uncategorized (Page 30 of 118)

There are about 12 large boys of the 15-16 year old variety in the house right now. They are discussing things like infinity to the infinity power, air soft gun wars, klingon, flashdrives, underground passageways, and zero to the zeroth power. One of them has even brought a sword. *What?* Who is this guy? I am SO not in my element. I have done my best to make them feel welcome. I have provided large amounts of pizza, sodas (although my friend Sam told me I should NEVER buy Diet Dr. Pepper again, as in his words, “It’s Nasty and tastes about like dirt”), m & m’s, and the ever important Sweedish Fish. My bowl of Sweedish fish actually disappeared in about 10 minutes, but I refilled it.

My other kids are upstairs watching the Princess and the frog on my bed. I’ll let them come down to eat pizza, if they want, but generally they are to stay out of the way.

For entertainment, I provided them with one of my all time favorite movies, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I’m pretty sure none of these guys has seen it, since we were watching and laughing at this movie BEFORE they were born. (“Why is the cork on the fork?” “My Grandmama taught me, ‘it is better to be truthful and good than to not”) If you haven’t seen it in a while, you should definitely watch it again. You’ll laugh, I promise.

Oh, wait! Do my eyes deceive me, or is there a GIRL here, as well. I’ll have to go and welcome her. Or maybe not. I wouldn’t want to scare her off.

Overall, I think it’s a pretty good turnout for his party. It is, after all, the YW general broadcast as well as PROM in these parts, although I doubt many of Cole’s sophomore friends would be going to that.

I’d better go and refill the pizza.

Where the heck have I been? You may be asking yourself. It’s not that I haven’t been home, or that I haven’t had anything to blog about, because both of those assumptions would be false. It’s just that we’ve had extra people here in the house, and it seemed that with the addition of those people, there were about 8 or 9 people who wanted to use this computer at any given time. And since I didn’t want to be sitting here staring at the computer screen trying to compose a coherent blog post, I just didn’t.

But we HAVE been busy. We’ve been going to basketball games.

Megan’s team did really well in the tournament, and after a heartbreaking CLOSE game, they lost by one point and ended up 3rd in their division.

Meeting up with friends.

I had dinner with some of my wonderful friends, and you can tell we were having some sort of amazing animated discussion there.

Then I met up with my roommates from my sophomore year.
It was so much fun to get together with these girls that I spent my life with 20 years ago. Here are 5 of the 6 of us that enjoyed that year together at Heritage Halls. You can see Jenny’s wrap up over HERE. While her camera took a better quality picture, my eyes were closed in her picture and open in mine. Go figure. It just happened that Jenny and Robin were both here in Utah for their Arizona spring breaks, so we just HAD to get together.

Robin and family were here for a week. They enjoyed (?) the snow, went skiing, and generally had a great time hanging out and playing with my kids. My kids, consequently, thought they were on vacation as well. I’ll just say that very little got done around here. But they had fun.

On Thursday, Robin mentioned that she didn’t have any curtains in her house, because she just didn’t know how to choose or make curtains. What?! No curtains?! That’s practically a SIN!!!! Well, curtains is one of the things that I actually CAN do, and I just couldn’t imagine not having curtains. So, off to the fabric store we went. We picked fabric that made them happy, and brought it all home to sew.

In two days, I made three sets of curtains. I think that’s got to be some kind of record. I’m happy with how they turned out, and I hope that they work out. Here’s Sarah, modeling her new curtains for her bedroom.

Then we worked on some curtains for Robin’s living room. I wish I had a better picture than this (the lighting is terrible, and since we’re just trying them out on my kitchen window, it looks pretty silly, but you’ll get the general idea). And it looks a little weird with my old kitchen curtains on the top and hers on the bottom, but just ignore all those discrepancies, if you will.

After I had the first one sewn and was starting the second one, I realized I probably had sewn the whole thing BACKWARD, but since on this upholstery type fabric, you can’t really tell which is the front or the back. I was prepared to redo that panel, but Robin said she really did like that side of the fabric better, so we just went with it.

I didn’t get a picture of Jacob’s curtains when they were finished, but here he is with the fabric before we sewed them. I think it’s a good color on him, don’t you?

Yes, sewing constantly for several hours is tiring and hurts my back, but it’s nice to have a sewing “assistant”. I would just tell Robin “cut this in four in strips, please” or “iron this”, and she would do it. It made the sewing go so much faster! I’m going to have to train my kids to do that next time I have a big sewing project.

Friday night was out last night on our “Spring Break Vay-Cay” so we had a “party” at home. There was food, lots of food, and movies, rock band, wii, murder in the dark, and lots of fun.

You don’t see me rocking out in these pictures, because I was the one behind the camera, but I did indeed play rock band, as well. The kids all stayed up WAY too late having fun with their friends from Arizona.

It was a fun filled week, and we’re so glad they came and stayed here. We all had a fun time, and we didn’t even have to go anywhere! And then when we go to Arizona in a few weeks for OUR spring break, we can stay at THEIR HOUSE and disrupt their lives with our fun and playing! (Evil laugh)

Didn’t win the car. Darn. I have to keep a positive attitude and know that if I keep trying, one of these times it will be my turn and I will win one. We had fun, though. My dear friend Robin is in town, and she came with me to the car winning thing, and they always let people put their names in to draw out for the extra keys, so she got a key, too. So, there we were, me, Robin and Ryan’s brother Kyle. We compared our keys, which looked exactly the same, and realized that it wasn’t really possible that any of us had the winning key. As they were going through the numbers, they weren’t even 10 people in and a girl won the car. Good for her. It would have been better for me, but I’ll try to keep the bitterness to myself.

***

Last night I went out with my greatest friends in the world. We laughed, we ate, we shared stories of ex-husbands, twins, jail, meth busts, birthday parties, and accidental shootings. Seriously. My life is blissfully boring in comparison. But OH, I love those ladies. They are the best, and I don’t know where I would be without their friendship and fun all these years.

***

This week, our fun friends from Arizona are here. They wanted a touch of winter for their spring break, and we are happy to have them. We’ll go and bother them there when it’s our spring break, so all’s fair. My kids are so thrilled to have them here. Mom eases up on the rules and the jobs and stuff, and they get to play and play all day. Yes, it will be hard on them when they have to go to SCHOOL on Monday and their friends do not, but oh, well. Today they’ve spent record time playing the x-box. It will be a fun week together, I’m sure.

***

This week I organized and pulled off a large scale cooking event. I and 10 other ladies got together with our chicken and a few other ingredients, and we each came away with 6 chicken dishes to freeze and use later. Since I’m in the RS presidency, I suggested the idea, and I therefore, was in charge of it. I divided up the ingredients, made assignments, bought a bunch of stuff, cooked a whole bunch of chicken, and organized the troops. It was honestly a WHOLE LOT OF WORK. But the ladies seemed to
a- have a good time
b-were happy to go home with so much food prepared
c-hopefully saved some money by buying in bulk.

Tonight for dinner I pulled out the chicken and broccoli, cooked up the noodles, heated the chicken and broccoli through, and there was dinner! I just had to have some fruit and veggies to go with it, and it fed 9 of us, with enough leftovers for one lunch. And it was easy and fast.

The event did not go without a few hiccups, of course. One of which was WHEN I LOST MY CHICKEN. Seriously! I had five cups of shredded chicken in a ziplock bag, as well as four grilled and sliced chicken breasts, and I COULD. NOT. FIND. IT. I kept wandering around the kitchen looking at everyone’s chicken, asking whose it was. I knew I had brought the chicken, I had showed it my friend. She had seen it and was my witness. So, I just made three of my chicken dishes without the chicken. Yes, I did. I knew it would show up SOMETIME. Preferably before the night was over. I was kind of stressed out at this point, hoping everything went well, and I’m sure my frazzledness didn’t help. We did run out of the manicotti stuffing, and our sauce for the artichoke chicken bake didn’t set up, but other that those things, I think it was a good event. I’ll have to ask people if they thought it was worth it, and maybe we’ll do it again for those people who weren’t able to come that night. I did have one friend tell me they want to do it again, and this time with hamburger recipes.

Maybe I can get her to organize it.

I am from:

smiles
last note of a song
fluff and feathers
curling up with a good book on the couch
fingerprints on the walls
hugs
testimony of truth
carpools and team moms
snow on the mountains
What caller am I?
trying not to be so frazzled, yet still frazzled
laughing

How about you?

**idea stolen from my friend Tess

A pirate walked into a bar and the bartender said, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. What happened? You look terrible.”

“What do you mean?” said the pirate, “I feel fine.”

“What about the wooden leg? You didn’t have that before.”

“Well, we were in a battle and I got hit with a cannon ball, but I’m fine now.”

“Well, ok, but what about that hook? “What happened to your hand?”

“We were in another battle. I boarded a ship and got into a sword fight. My hand was cut off. I got fitted with a hook. I’m fine, really.”

“What about that eye patch?”

“Oh, one day we were at sea and a flock of birds flew over. I looked up and one of them pooped in my eye.”

“You’re kidding,” said the bartender, “you couldn’t lose an eye just from some bird poop.”

“It was my first day with the hook.”

I picked up a 1/2 gallon of organic WHOLE milk the other day. Because it was expiring, and thus was only $1.00. I don’t usually buy organic milk, and I NEVER buy whole milk. 8 grams of fat per serving? I don’t think so. So, that was the special treat milk for my two ultra skinny kids. I told them, “Cole and Megan, here’s some milk for you. Only you. Don’t tell the other kids about it, and you can drink as much as you want, just make sure you finish it in the next couple of days.” They each poured themselves a glass of milk right then. And then another glass for dinner. And then they must have had another glass or two after dinner, because by morning, there was an empty milk carton in the fridge.
(Why do people do that? Put an empty container back? At my house, that happens all the time. I guess it’s like not admitting that you took the last of something. Whatever. I digress).

I must admit I’m sometimes somewhat of a milk scrooge, especially last month when I was attempting to only spend $100 on groceries for the month. I just couldn’t afford to be buying 5 or 6 gallons of milk per week like I usually do, so I would only let them have one glass of milk for dinner, and then if they were still thirsty, they had to have water. So these two skinny kids were SO THRILLED to have this carton of milk to drink with reckless abandon. Who knew that milk could make a kid so happy. I’ll have to remember that, and the next time whole milk is on sale, maybe I’ll get them some.

I’ve been battling this cold for a couple of days now. I did pretty much nothing productive yesterday. Last night I even asked my husband to show me how do the nasal washing. I must have been pretty desperate. But I manned up and did it, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I might actually even do it again tonight. Maybe.

Cough, cough, sneeze, sneeze, snort.

My Jenna was complaining of stomach aches and headaches and crying last night, and still doesn’t feel good today. Since there was no throwing up, I normally would hesitate in letting her stay home from school, but really, I still feel like crap, so who am I to tell her she isn’t sick enough to stay home?

So, she’s home, I’m home, we’re all home. In the snow.

Billy Joel and Elton John

We had to wait a while for this concert, since it was originally scheduled for November, but this date was actually much better for us, so I’m not complaining.

When I won my tickets back in the fall, our friend and neighbor heard that I was going, and mentioned that he was so jealous. He had thought about going, but didn’t see the point in paying so much for the bad seats that were left. So, when I won another set of tickets later, I decided to give them to him. He and his wife were very appreciative, and offered to buy us dinner. Win-win!

So, Friday night, they picked us up and we were off on a double date! We went to the Gateway to eat dinner, but found that every restaurant was crowded and had long waits. We put our names on the list at Applebees (you know, “30 minutes”) and then went to find something else that might be faster. No such luck. So, 10 minutes later we were back at Applebees, waiting. I think they got us in at 6:45, which was cutting it close. We asked our server what would be fast to order, and then we all ordered off the sandwich page, to expedite things. To their credit, the service was quite quick, and we were out of there a few minutes before the concert was scheduled to start, at 7:30. We walked over to the Energy Solutions Arena, and there was a BIG LINE to get in. I’ve never really had to wait in line to get in. I wondered if there had been a problem with ticketing or security or something. Or maybe everyone else was also late from waiting for Applebees. I don’t know.

Once we got in, we parted ways with our friends, since our tickets were in AA, and theirs were in VV. We climbed up to our seats, and discovered that while we were facing the stage, we were VERY far away.

See that section 101? Well, go up 15 rows, and there we were. I think there were about 6 rows behind us, so I feel bad for those guys. Our friends were closer, but had to see the concert from the side, so they couldn’t see all the jumbo screens and stuff.

With two great artists and a WHOLE bunch of songs, the concert was great. Here’s a pretty honest review of it here, in case you are interested. Billy Joel was a lot more personable than Elton, talking to the crowd and such. He actually said, “I’m not Billy Joel, I’m his old man.” The songs were great, and we did some singing along.

I noticed a correlation between how close your seats were and how much dancing was going on. Way back in our section, there were only one or two people dancing, including the lady two down from me who looked to be in her 60’s and was wearing her leather pant. I think she was there with her mom. She did a lot of dancing, singing and shouting out. She got her groove on. But really, she was only one of 3 people in our section who were dancing. Down on the floor, however, there was a LOT of dancing going on. I don’t know how much they paid for those seats, but they must be the die hard fans, because they were all crowding the stage to shake hands with the artists, dancing in the isles, having a party. Of course, it from the look of it there was also a lot more beer consumed down there than way up in the cheap (or in our case–free) seats.

I’ll admit that I’m kind of an old fogey when it comes to concerts, and I think they are just too darn loud. Why must they turn up the amps to defcon 12? I put in my earplugs for the last four songs (yes, I did bring ear plugs. What’s your point?) and thought the songs sounded better through the earplugs.

As they were wrapping up the concert, I turned to my husband and yelled over the noise, “But he hasn’t done Piano Man yet,” and then, what do you know, they BOTH played and sang piano man. I took out my earplugs for that one.

Overall, it was a really fun night!

I just twirled John around the kitchen. “We’re just like figure skaters!” I said, since thoughts of Olympics and figure skating are current right now.

“You would be too old,” he said.

It’s just not possible. I can’t be that old. Nope. But sure enough, last night the Young Women had their New Beginnings Night, and Natalie was invited. Because she will turn 12 this year and enter the Young Women’s program. Nope. I can’t be that old.

But in a way, I’m excited. I’m hoping that YW will give my two oldest girls something more in common, some reason to bond. Because right now they don’t get along. There is a lot of tension and fighting and rude behavior between the two girls and I can’t really do anything to stop it. I remember in my own growing up years that my brother and I used to fight and tease each other. Well, if we’re being honest, it was mostly me doing the teasing. But then, once we were both in high school, we had something in common. Our own private “club” or something. And we got to be friends. I have hope that something like that will happen with my girls. Hey, a mom can hope, can’t she?

I’m also excited about the new personal progress program. Did you know that Moms can get their own personal progress awards along with their daughters? It think that’s cool. If I’m working on my value goals along with my girls, maybe we can keep track a little better.

What do you think of the new personal progress program?