Category: Uncategorized (Page 51 of 118)

So, guess what I did yesterday.

Go ahead–Guess!

I bet you can’t guess. Go ahead…you in the back. ????
Nope. I didn’t sprain my ankle. Nope, I didn’t run off and get married (I’m already happily married, silly!)
Nope, I didn’t sell any of my children, although I wanted to.

Keep guessing.

Oh, I’ll just tell you already. I purchased cemetery plots. Really! Why, pray tell, did I purchase cemetery plots for myself and my dear hubby, you may ask? Well, basically because the price was going up. Yep. Until June 30th, you could get a plot in our little Highland cemetery for $500 each. On July 1st the price nearly doubles. Plus, I can just add it into my city bill and pay for it over the next two years.

I’ve been meaning to go in and take care of this little detail for the past couple of weeks, but of course I left it to the last day. I went in to the city office building, and asked, “Are you having a run of people here to buy cemetery plots?” I asked casually. “Are we ever!” they told me. But I guess I came at a good time because there was only one person ahead of me meeting with the coordinator, so I only had to wait about 10 minutes. I went in, and she showed me a map of the cemetery and said, “So, where do you want to be?” Always the wanna-be, I asked if they could look someone else up and see if I could be by them. My friend, Tess, is also here in Highland, and I knew she had already bought her spots. So, I picked two little spots out right by Tess and David, so we can chat when we’re all dead and buried! Won’t that be fun!? Well, not really, because we’ll all be dead and probably won’t have that much to say to each other. The lady praised me for being so quick to make up my mind. She told me that she’s had people agonizing over spots, calling to change their spots and all sorts of hassles. Well, I’m nothing if not quick to make up my mind (sometimes).

So, where will you be buried? Hmmm?

It’s not every day you see this from your back yard.

We heard the loud “whoop whoop” sound and looked up to see a life flight helicopter right over us. The fireman yelled over at me to “keep your kids back”, because what kid can resist getting closer to a real live helicopter?

When they landed, a couple of guys got out and went somewhere we couldn’t see, and then we had to just wait from our yard and see.

Of course there was a firetruck there, too. We hadn’t heard a crash or anything, so we didn’t think it was a car accident, but we were still curious. I mean, this kind of stuff doesn’t happen very often in our neighborhood.

Later on we found out that it was an accident at home, and the person involved is doing better every day, but for an afternoon, that was our excitement.

Cole has been busy this summer. I can’t believe he’s so grown up. He’s 14 and mows the lawn for us, (which is great because it’s one of the only ways a 14 year old kids can earn any money), babysits whenever I need him to, and now that school is out, is really quite pleasant. Last weekend he also did his first garage sale.

Here he is standing in front of all our old stuff that he’d like to sell.

Of course, he didn’t just do it all by himself. It was his “band fundraiser” garage sale, and all the money he earned goes toward his band trip this fall, but did he do it alone? No. I’d been collecting things for the previous two weeks. I went through the girls’ closets and tried to weed out the clothing they didn’t need. Jenna’s was the most fun. As the 3rd girl in the family, she ends up with a LOT of clothes. We went through her closet and picked out everything that said size 6 or 6x (since she’s 7 1/2 now) and then tried to whittle down the dresses to “just 10”. I know, I know. Just 10? She had a lot more. I even got rid of a bunch of stuff from my closet, too. We also brought up the kids’ kitchen set and the little tykes tool bench and tools, the bouncy horse and mini trampoline from the basement. The kids weren’t too thrilled that I was getting rid of their kitchen. “We LOVE that!” they wailed. But I was insistant that if we are ever going to finish our basement, we need to start getting rid of some of the things we don’t really play with. Besides, Cole could use the money.

The kids and Ryan loaded all that stuff into the truck, and then I drove Cole and Megan to the High school at 6:30 to set up. I can’t believe all that stuff that I had been collecting for weeks only took up one load in our little pick up truck. I thought it was a lot more.

I had to leave the young entrepreneurs at 8:15 so I could go to my Saturday rehearsal, and by that time he had only sold a few dollars worth of our stuff. Darn. But things eventually picked up and he made a total of $50. And we got rid of a bunch of stuff. What didn’t sell, of course, went to DI, and that was just fine with me.

Yesterday, Cole marched in his first “REAL” parade, the Lehi Round-up. As former residents of Lehi, we’ve attended this parade many times, and the kids have actually even been in the miniature parade before. But this time he had to march AND play the flute at the same time. For two grueling miles in the hot sun. And they started at around 11:00am. Oh, and did I mention that they are wearing black?

They can’t be like a lot of high school bands and actually wear shorts and a t-shirt for their parades, they have to put on the whole flipping uniform and nearly sweat to death for their parades.

The worst thing, though, is that Cole is severely sun burned. Oh, yeah. He and Megan went with some awesome friends (thanks, David!) to Classic skating and waterslides on Friday, and I sent him with a bottle of sunscreen. Here is where this is kind of my fault. I SENT him with the spray can of sunscreen. I didn’t spray him all over myself before he left. And kids don’t seem to understand that you can’t just lightly spray that stuff on, you have to spray enough that you can see it, and then rub it in. Well, that didn’t happen, and he didn’t just wear his shirt, like I’m going to insist he do at all future sun/water events. His shoulders and back are very red, and he just walks around all day saying, “ow”. We’ve slathered on the aloe, and he’s taking tylenol, but he’s still very uncomfortable. So, needless to say, the whole marching in the hot black uniform wasn’t the most fun thing. But he did it. he survived, and he’s stronger for it.

(Just for the record, I didn’t actually attend this parade, as I had another Saturday rehearsal, so thanks to Ryan for taking the kids and sitting in the sun waiting for Cole to come by. They did get TONS of candy and stuff thrown at them, though. They even got a couple of t-shirts! So, Ryan, if you have anything to add here, feel free!)

He’s lucky he didn’t have to strap on the drums or a tuba!

And for his reward, the marching band plans to go to Seven Peaks Water Park tomorrow! Yippee! I’m not sure if Cole will want to go, or if he’ll be able to hang with his cousins, who are in town and will soon be staying with us.

This week at play rehearsal we met with the hair and make-up people so they could get us all up to speed on how we should look. There’s some pretty wild and crazy things going on, since we have jungle animals, bird girls, monkeys, fish, a cat, a grinch, and a bunch of Whos, just to name a few.

After a general workshop on makeup and hair, Mr. Mayor and I (I play Mrs. Mayor) had our own appointment where they went over what they had in mind for us. She showed me this very bland short GREY wig, and said, “This will be your hair.” Grey? They want me to have grey hair? What? I had this really cute blonde curly princess type wig that I was going to put all kinds of ribbons on and be super cute and funky, and she shows me this GREY wig, and I’m supposed to be excited about it. Well, they had me put it on and this one lady started to go to work on it. “It won’t look like this when I’m finished with it,” she said, and she started in on ratting and teasing and somehow curling it with just her fingers and a comb. She told me how she had done so much hair she was thinking about switching to grooming dogs, since it would be something new. Hmm. ‘Can you just not make me look old and ugly?’ is all I’m thinking. After she worked her magic on my “hair” for a few minutes, the makeup ladies are just oohing and ah-ing, telling me how absolutely perfect it is. I go into a nearby bathroom to see, and as I look at my reflection in the mirror, a gasp of shock escapes my lips. All I can think of is “I look Martha Washington!” Not that looking like Martha Washington is necessarily a bad thing, but I just hadn’t expected that. And how in the world did she get that hair so dang HIGH? Wow.

After I had been properly coiffed, the make-up people wanted to have their fun, too. “Can I just do your face really quickly?” one lady asked me. “Um, sure. Go for it,” I said, still in shock from the whole GREY huge hair I would be wearing. “Now for your makeup,” she said, “I want you to think of Mimi on Drew Carey.” Oh great. I can’t wait. As they are working on my face, adding more and more make-up, I look over at Mr. Mayor as they are glueing on some “eyebrow extensions” so that he looks somewhat like Oscar the grouch, and I feel a little bit better. At least I won’t be the only really funny looking one in the show. I shouldn’t have worried, though. At least I’m not the grinch. They were playing with prosthetic faces and noses. And he’ll be green, of course.

When they were done, there was another gasp of shock, and we went to go show the director. She liked it, but said she wasn’t so sure about the grey color. Oh, hooray! I thought. “She has a little boy, I don’t think she would be this old looking,” she said. I was grateful. So, they may color that wig brown or even black. Who knows. But they also discussed some kind of a funky hat, which would be fun.

The bad thing, was I didn’t have my camera with me, so I didn’t get a picture of the whole effect. But I did leave the makeup on all night through rehearsal. I felt very Tammy Fae Baker-esque. Little kids in the show were staring at me, and then would say, “I like your makeup.” Right, you do, kid. Don’t let your mom hear you saying that.

So, when I came home I flashed my face to Ryan, who was just a little bit shocked. He said I was practically ‘glowing’.

So, there you have it. Mimi and Paige together. Oh what a pair we’d make. Although I think I’m going to need a LOT more blue eyeshadow if I’m going to pull off that look.

I just have to share the laughter and direct you to this post about bra shopping. You’re welcome.

On Father’s Day I snagged the cutest little 3 month old Eliza from my friend and gave her to Ryan to play with before church started. He just loves those babies. All the kids were fawning over her and we had such fun playing with the darling little happy girl. Right when the meeting was going to start, she did some work in her diaper and so Ryan gave her back to her mom.

A couple of days later John came into my room and said, “Mommy, we need another baby.”
“Well, YOU’RE the last baby John,” I said to him, “we don’t need any more babies! We have you.”

That kind of logic doesn’t really impress a four year old, and he said, “No. We need wots more babies. Wots and wots.”

Ok, that’s the last time I let the kids watch Jon and Kate plus 8.