Category: Uncategorized (Page 41 of 118)
Because of Ryan and his unfortunate illness this week, we decided to postpone Jenna’s baptism. She was a little disappointed, but was very good about it.
And not having the baptism on Saturday actually made our weekend much more simple. The girls got to go to their basketball and soccer games, which they were willing to miss, but were happy when they actually got to attend. Especially since it was picture day. But we still wanted Jenna to feel like her birthday was special. On Friday, her actual birthday, she got to go out to dinner and go shopping with her grandparents. She picks the restaurant, and she picks the presents. She came home with a Los Hermanos t-shirt, a balloon from Toys R Us, a light bright and a small stuffed animal. I think she did alright.
Saturday cake master Julene brought over the cake she had made as per Jenna’s request. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said she wanted “a bunch of white bunny and one orange bunny.” I have no idea why. But when I told Julene that’s what she wanted, she wasn’t deterred. She ended up making the bunnies out of cookies, with one orange cookie bunny in the middle. As usual, it was darling. 
After we went to Dinosaur Museum we came home and had a quick dinner and then ate cake. 
The only problem is–there’s too much cake. It was just the seven of us, instead of the 40 people we had planned on helping us eat the cake. And we don’t need to be eating all of that cake.
I’ve joined in a Biggest Loser Challenge with my sister and some of her friends, in fact, and cake is the last thing I need. But I did save all my points for the day so and passed on the pizza that the kids were having and ate a salad instead, all because I wanted just one piece of cake. And it was indeed extremely yummy cake. A bit too much frosting, which I scraped off, but oh-so-yummy. But I am not made of will power. If there is a cut up cake sitting on the counter for more than 30 minutes, I may find myself snitching. So, first we loaded up a paper plate with six big pieces of yummy cake and took them over to the neighbors. Let them eat cake! They were appreciative, of course. Then I took that cake and portioned it out into individual serving sized containers to be frozen or taken for lunches. It looked like this.
So now that cake is out of sight, and hopefully out of mind.
Friday night Ryan and I had plans to go to see Lord of the Dance. I won the tickets back in November, and it’s been on our calendar for a while. Yes, it was on Jenna’s birthday, but we scheduled something fun for her so she wouldn’t mind that mom and dad were gone. Well, Ryan didn’t want to go, so at the last minute I threw out the invite to a few friends, and my friend Lisa was quick to respond that she wanted to go. So she was my date for the evening, and we had a great time.
The show was incredible! It’s a show basically about good vs. evil, and the dancing is amazing. How do they do that, I’d like to know. And from now on, I think all wars should be fought like that. We select our best dancers and have a dance off to fight our wars. No one gets killed, there may be a few injuries but no casualties, and we all enjoy a real good show. How about it, world leaders?
So, even though our weekend wasn’t what we had planned, things turned out well. We’ll get to do the baptism next month, and hopefully everyone will be healthy and happy then.
Winners!!! I let random.org pick the winners for the CD contests, and our winners are Becky,
#49–Becky Says:
January 27th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’d like to win either. Here’s my comment to enter the The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra CD. I love catching them on PBS.
and Mrs. Mommy.
#29–MRS.MOMMYY Says:
January 26th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
the wow looks great
Thanks to everyone who entered, and I hope to have another contest soon.
Today is Jenna’s birthday.
When she was born, the other three kids were very excited to have a new sister.
And what cutie she was!
She really is a joy. She tries to make others happy, and she wants to do what’s right.
She has big goals in life. She wants to be an actress or a singer, or a veterinarian, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a mom.
She’s a good sport.
Jenna is the only one in our family to break a bone, and she had a good attitude about that, too. She loved that wheelchair.
And she loves her animals. I’m proud of Jenna. She is a special little person and I can’t wait to see what kinds of things she accomplishes in her life.
Happy Birthday, Jenna-boo.
Our little family video/LDS bookstore/post office is a thing of the past. Now we have no post office in our city. Again. And I have a package to mail to my friend in Arizona that may NEVER get to her, now.
I don’t know what it is about that little strip mall. You’d think that a business could stay there for more than a few years. Last spring I went to the dance store to buy tights, and found that the dance store had been replace with a tanning salon. Oh! I’ll admit I had never been to that dance store before, but I knew it was there.
I’ve been to this family video store many times. I have even bought things other than just rented a movie. I have used the post office many times, also, and I am confused and sad that it’s not there.
What do we have to do to get a post office in our city, I ask you?
I want to tell you about my latest home decorating project. 
I had mentioned before how my sister the artist drew some portraits of my kids for my Christmas gift. Well, after I got them all framed up, they just looked too washed out against our off white walls, so I decided I needed to paint. I had also bought myself this mirror for my birthday, and realized it would rather sit on a wall that wasn’t white, too.
Since Ryan had Friday off, he said he would help me paint if I would buy the paint. You don’t have to tell me more than once. I immediately went to Wal Mart to buy paint. I wasn’t exactly sure what color I wanted, but I knew it would be in the brown or gold family. I picked up about three different swatch colors and in five minutes had decided on a color. It’s called February Gold.
I actually liked the darkest color on the card, but I heard somewhere that you are supposed to go one shade darker than you actually want. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I did that, and ended up with this gold color.
With a little help from my number one helper, I got to work painting. Lucky for me, he had school that day, so I did the bulk of the paint job after he left for school, and by the time he got back, it was done. Ryan did the top edges with the cool edger thing, and I did the walls with the cool roller thing that sucks the paint into the handle.
It really makes painting go a lot faster, and there’s less drips and spills than using a roller and a tray (and no, they didn’t send me one to use and try out and review here, I just like it). I does, however, use a lot of paint. I used a whole gallon of paint on just two walls of that room.
Anyway, By the time the kids got home from school, I was pretty much done with the painting for the day, and the room looked kind of like this.
I was feeling pretty good about the paint job and the color until the kids came home.
“WoW! Yellow walls!” they said.
“That’s gold,” I told them.
“Huh. It looks kind of like yellow to me.”
“Gold. See the sample? February Gold.” I said.
I guess they knew enough not to mess with me, because they called it gold from then on. Good children.
Saturday I did some touch ups, then called on some friends to help me figure out how to arrange my pictures. The sad thing was, that with the new mirror, none of my old “country” decor worked anymore. We stole a few things from another room, and decided that if I painted them all black they could work. But nothing got hung up quite yet.
Monday a friend happened to be coming over. A friend with a background in design. What’s the point of having a designer friend if you can’t ask them design questions? My point exactly. He gave me some different ideas that I really liked.
Tuesday found me spray painting a frame, a shelf and a chair black. I like spray paint! Tuesday Ryan also hung the pictures of the kids. I love them! Unfortunately, with the glass over them and the light from the windows and flash, I haven’t been able to get a good picture. I should have scanned them before I framed them (and actually, I tried to, but for some reason it only gave me 1/2 a picture. Hmmm). So, here’s how they look on the wall, but you can’t really see how wonderful they are from these pictures. You’ll just have to come over and see them in person.
Aren’t they great? This is actually the fourth set of drawings my sister has done for me. She give to me for Christmas every three years, and this is always what I want. If you are interested in having her draw pictures of YOUR kids, you could always contact her through me. She’s quite talented.
Here’s that wall finished.
Then I had to get busy on hanging the mirror and everything on the other wall. I had measured things out on the floor and got impatient and didn’t want to wait for when Ryan could help me, so on Friday I just did it. First I got the mirror up on the wall in the general place I wanted it. 
Then I put the frame below it, the family picture to the side, and the shelf below that. It looked like this.
I looked around the house for things to put on that little black shelf, and found the ‘imagine’ sign in my kitchen and tried it out. It looked great, in my opinion.
So, there’s that wall of the room. It turned out quite nice, don’t you think? Last night, after I got it all arranged and took all the stray toys out of there, I just sat in there and read my book. Alone. Each time a child would come in, I would say, “Hey, don’t bring your stuff in here!” and they would slink out. I guess that’s what I’ve got to do to keep a room clean around here.
We’re thick in the middle of an inversion here, and it makes the fog/smog thick, and the air heavy with pollution. And it’s dang cold. I’m freezing all the time! Hopefully there’s a storm coming through in the next few days to blow all this ick out of the valley, and then we can see our beautiful mountains again.
I heard on the radio that we are NOT supposed to exercise today because of the poor air quality. Ok. I won’t.
What? That only applies to outside exercise? Well, they didn’t SAY that. I heard NO exercise, so that’s what I’m going by.
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”–Barack Obama
What an amazing day today has been. As I was watching the inaugural address on tv, my daughter was practicing the piano in the other room, playing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”. It brought a tear to my eye. And although I might not have voted for President Obama, and I may not agree with all of his politics, he is now my president, and I have high hopes for the future. I believe he can be a great president.
As the kids came home and I was watching the whole thing on tv, they said, “Oh, we watched this all day at school.” I’m glad they watched it at school. I don’t know about the ‘all day’ part, but I hope that they remember this day. The day that a black man became the president of the United States of America. A day that they should remember.
“For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”
I had the weirdest dream last night! I dreamed we moved to…well, I don’t want to offend anyone, so I’ll just say we were moving to “Somewhere else”. I hated it. I had a friend there, (Joan Cusack, actually) and she had told everyone at church about her wonderful friend, Paige, who was moving there and how much they would all love me. When we got there, we went to church, and everyone was wearing their red team sweatshirts and sweaters and jeans. At church. Hmmm. We Mormons usually dress up for church, but I guess things are different there. My friend kept introducing us to people, but with their thick accents I had to keep asking them what they had just said, and still wasn’t understanding. I did a lot of smiling and nodding, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. They would look at Joan, and say, “Well, I don’t like her.”
Our house was small, and had about 6 feet of yard on all sides of the house. I tried to meet neighbors and they all turned away from me and wouldn’t talk or get to know me at all. I was so sad.
This morning Ryan put his arm around me in bed, and all I could say was, “Please don’t make me move to “Somewhere else”. They don’t like me there.” He reassured me that there’s not much chance of us moving to that particular place in the near future. Good. I like it here.
But I’ve still been thinking about that dream today. Wondering why those people didn’t like me, and wondering how long it would take until I got used to things and the new neighborhood and all that. As if we really were moving! How silly is that?
Don’t you hate it when you dream something that’s so real, and then you think about it during the day and wonder about things in your dream? Or am I the only one that does that?
As one who loves musicals, I got a real kick out of this one. I hope you enjoy it, too.
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