Category: Uncategorized (Page 83 of 118)

Natalie was baptized on Saturday, and it was a wonderful day.

I wish I had taken more pictures, but once it was over we hurried back home and had a big family party with lunch for everyone, and I forgot to take more pictures. But the kids all looked great, and were all well behaved, and it was a very special day for Natalie.

I won this CD today, and I’m SO excited to hear it (once I go and pick it up–or better yet, get Ryan to go and pick it up for me.) Nothin’ better than a hot man who can sing, right? And he’s got a sexy Aussie accent, too.

The beginning of a week, also the start of a new month, and I feel the need to set some goals for myself this week, so I’m not wandering aimlessly doing nothing.

1-exercise 5 days this week

2-No shopping. I realized that I went to Costco twice, Kohls, Target and Rod Works last week, and this shopping has got to stop. I wonder if I could go the whole week only going to the grocery store one time, and no other shopping. We’ll see.

3-Get the reflections certificates printed, filled out, and figure out the prizes. Our awards assembly is next Friday, and I’ve still got lots to do.

4-tape the family room in preparation for painting.

These are just extra things added on to the rest of my regular duties (laundry, cleaning, driving the kids all over, help at the school today), but I feel they are reasonable goals. I’ll check back and let you know if I did them. What are your goal today? This week?

I’ve been tagged by Melinda for a meme, and I’m supposed to tell why we named our children the names that we did. Unlike people who have all these lovely family names dating back to the crossing of the mayflower, we don’t do that.

Cole Spencer Erickson was supposed to be a girl. Seriously–ultrasound and everything. He would have been named Megan. But we did have a back-up boy name, which we came to after some serious controversy. Ryan came up with the idea to name him Cole, after my maiden name, which is Coleman. He would be our little “Cole man.” But at the time I was working at Coverstar (yes, I’ve had weird jobs, what of it?) and there was this rep in California who was a bad bad man, who cheated, lied and stole and was the nemisis of the company. Yep, his name was Cole. I had such a sour taste in my mouth from that Cole that I couldn’t see what a great name it would be. But since I was quitting when the baby was born, I got over it. I chose the middle name, Spencer, after the prophet Spencer W. Kimball.

Megan Rene’ was next, and I don’t know how we came up with Megan originally, except that I made a long long list of names that I kind of liked, and Ryan crossed them all off except one (he’s real helpful that way). We came up with Rene’ and just liked the combination. So, no, she’s not named after anyone in particular.

Natalie Robin. It was either Natalie or Karen, although I think we were going to spell Karen some different way. I think Ryan liked Karen because she was the girl at Hogi Yogi who served us. Seriously. This is how we pick our names! Robin seemed like a good middle name, and was the name of one of my fun roommates and friends. Oh, and we were kind of building on the one syllable (Cole), two syllable (Megan) and then three syllable thing (Natalie).

Jennifer Anne. I think I tried to slide Darcy in here, but Ryan quickly shot that one down. He doesn’t really suggest names, only knocks down almost ALL my suggestions. I liked Jenna, but not particularly Jennifer. There were so many Jenny’s growing up, but I thought maybe the Jennifer craze had passed and she wouldn’t be one of four Jennifers in her class. We didn’t have a middle name, and when Grandma E came to see her in the hospital, and we didn’t have a middle name yet, she suggested Anne, and we said, OK.

John Steven. I wanted something stong. Maybe with an X in it. Dax, Max, Alex, Xander. We came up with Jonn. Not Jonathan (Ryan didn’t like that). Everyone in Junior High had a crush on John Steele, and so of course that name was a good one. Steven is the name of one of my cousins who was serving a mission at the time. It doesn’t fit in with the syllable thing, but we thought we’d just stick with one syllable names for the boys.

More information than you wanted, I know! So, I tag Lisa, Michelle, and Amber. And if you don’t have a blog but would like to tell how you chose the names you did, leave it in the comments.

Many thanks to Melinda for pointing this out to me. It brought back such fond memories of Robin and I creating tampon mice for our small dorm-like apartment Christmas tree. She even sent me some of those mice for Christmas while I was on my mission in Germany. Now, that’s a true friend for you.

I also remember the good old roommate tutorial for the roommate who had never used tampons and needed a little nudging to discover the joys of going without those big pads. And then there was the roommate who had a vaginal cyst and was convinced that it had come out with her tampon.

I wish I could somehow link to the “Red Dwarf” episode where Kryten throws Kochanski (and I know I’m not spelling those right, so Ryan, go ahead and correct my spelling like you sometimes do — already done) a Happy Period Party. He gives her a gift wrapped tampon and says she’ll probably be pretty busy playing tennis in tight white shorts and pouring blue liquid. Very funny stuff.

— Clip can be found here (only the first part, obviously). — Ryan

Oh, I could go on and on, and it’s not even that time of the month. Thanks, again, Mel, because you are the one who prompted this flood of fond memories.

Oh, how tired we all are this morning. The kids had a wonderful day of Halloween. I have sore fingers today, not from trick-or-treating, but from making balloon animals for all of John’s preschool class and then all of Jenna’s Kindergarten. Yes, I dressed up and did the clown thing. Then I watched two of my friend’s children for the afternoon so she could attend two more class parties (eek!). When the kids came home from school, we hurried and went to Ryan’s work for some much needed candy grabbing. We didn’t get there until about 4:30 because of circumstances beyond my control (children and their silly needs), so Ryan was getting a bit anxious, but we managed to get there in time to grab some candy and show off the cute kids before quittin time.

At home, we had a quick dinner and got the kids ready, and heard Jenna say no less than 672 times, “I want to go trick or treating now!” Ryan did the honors this year, wearing his carharts and gloves. Everyone had very bright green and blue blinky lights, courtesy of the last trade show. I think each child brought home his or her weight in candy. Seriously. I gave out candy, and for the moms and dads, diet coke bottles. I had several people tell me that was their best treat EVAH.

I’ve offered my kids $10 each for their candy stash, but so far, nobody is taking up my offer. I’m not sure how we’re going to handle the candy consumption, but we’ll figure it out.

My kids were so excited to wear their costumes, they got up early just to put them on. By 9:00 some of them had already been in costume ready to go for 2 hours!

John hasn’t quite gotten the concept of the whole Daylight savings time, so he just comes in my bed “earlier” than before. Today I looked at the clock and it was 5:00 when he crawled in and started kicking me and grabbing my hair. While I treasure our “special together time”, I just wish we could start at a decent hour–like 7:00. He does go back to sleep, about 5 minutes before I need to get up to help the other kids get ready. Oh well.

So today I’ll be going to John’s preschool party, take some pictures, then go to Jenna’s Kindergarted party where I will be manning the “pin the nose on the Jack-o-lantern” game. I may or may not dress up in a clown costume. I have one hour to get all my noses and blindfolds ready and get myself into costume.

After school today, we’ll go to Ryan’s office and trick or treat cubicle to cubicle. It’s a lot faster and warmer way to get boatloads of candy. Ryan forgot our candy contribution–it’s still sitting among the family fallout on what I think is still the kitchen counter. I haven’t seen it in a while, so I’m not exactly sure. I’ll get to that…soonish.

And then we’ll do the traditional neighborhood begging for candy from the neighbors–how fun!

I hope you all enjoy your Halloween and we’ll have lots more pictures to share soon.

The travel agency handling the Cancun trip sent some documentation with flight times and some info, and it said we should have current passports, and if not you need to take a bunch of stuff like your birth certificate, drivers lisence and marriage certificate. So, I decided I’d better get a new passport (International traveler that I am.) Neither Ryan nor I could find or remember where we’d filed our old passports, but he eventually found both of them. His had just barely expired and mine had been expired for 6 years. An hour at the post office and $350 later, we’d completed our passport applications.

My advice to you–get your passport, or if you have one, renew it before it lapses. It will cost you SO MUCH LESS if you don’t have to expidite it. The regular processing takes 6-8 weeks, so if you need one before then, they hit you with almost double the cost to get it in 2-3 weeks. So be like Sandra Bullock in “While you were sleeping” and get your passport, even if you have no plans of traveling. It’s good for 10 years, and chances are you’ll need it in the next 10 years, right?

After torturing my two small children in the post office for a long wait in line, we got out of there. They hadn’t been bad, but they hadn’t been especially quiet, either. They had found three other children whose parents were also waiting in the long long line and started playing hide and seek. Not much of a challenge when there’s a bench, a display and your mom to hide behind, but they still had fun. After I left with the kids, Ryan stayed back to talk to a cousin of his who was there at the post office, and he overheard a very large man say rudely, “I didn’t know this was a nursery.” Well, excuse me, mr. Large man, but what else are the kids supposed to do while moms wait for an hour in line? Maybe you don’t have children, or have never been around children, but those kids were behaving pretty darn well considering the circumstances. As long as they aren’t screaming or hitting you or throwing up on you, why don’t you give those kids (and their parents) some slack?!

I wasn’t actually there to overhear the rude comment, because I was on my way to the library, where we got a much better deal. For a mere $2.60, we were able to check out two DVD’s, a VHS movie, about 24 books, and 3 CD’s. It would have only been $2 had I not had a fine, but since the Library is not in my own little city, I have a hard time getting things back in the required time, and most every time I go in I have some kind of fine. Oh well, I consider that part of the price of checking out books. My kids were so happy to get new books, and when I got them all home it was a sight to behold–all of my kids sitting and reading new books. That’s what I call a bargain!

It’s early in the morning (well, before 8:00, anyway), and I have nothing cute and witty to say. So, here are my random thoughts:

–Our inflatable frankenstein is having a rough time of it out in the wind. It’s like he’s break dancing out there or something. The humane thing to do would be to unplug him until the wind stops blowing, but then I’d have to go outside, and it’s cold out there right now. I’ll wait until the next batch of kids leave for school, and have them do it.

–I LOVE the new Josh Grobin song, “Don’t give up.” It’s awesome!

–We went to our ward Halloween party last night. Lots of fun. The youth put on the games, including the football throw, a make your own bat craft, bean bag toss, musical chairs, eat the donut from the string, etc. Then there was a little parade, costume contest, and a trunk or treat. I told the kids they could eat 3 pieces of candy and the rest was going into the old rubbermaid shoebox. After much complaining and whining and “it’s mY candy, I should get to keep it”s, we indeed dumped it all –It didn’t fit! I had to dump it into a bucket! Can I use that same candy to give to the trick or treaters next week? I don’t have a problem with it, but I’m sure the small people won’t go for it.

–My knees hate it when I go to the kickboxing class on Tuesday. I don’t particularly like it, either, but my knees hurt for two or three days afterwards, and I could hardly walk up or down the stairs yesterday. I’m old and fat and not made for exercise.

–The average american sends an average of 46 text messages per week. Um, I guess I’m not average, or those teenage girls are using all of my texting time. The topic of conversation in nursery the other week was how high the cell phone bills of certain girls in the ward went ($800) because of text messaging. My advice to parents out there? Don’t give your kids a cell phone. But that’s just me. My oldest is a boy who has no interest or use for a cell phone (like his dad) and hopefully never will.

updated to add: Um, it’s snowing right now. Great!