Category: Uncategorized (Page 84 of 118)

Ryan and I have been invited to an 80’s party this weekend. We are supposed to come dressed as our favorite 80’s couple. Some things that came to mind were Devo (pointy hats), Robert Palmer dancers (I don’t think I could pull off that look, though, and don’t own anything that tight and that short, so that’s out), Wham, A flock of seaguls? I don’t know!!!

So, I was thinking maybe Cyndi Lauper–I could rat my hair real big, find some legwarmers and a skirt, rip a t-shirt to wear over another t-shirt, lots of makeup….What do you think? But then who could Ryan go as? Phil Collins? He’s kind of bald.

I need some help here. Any great ideas?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m in charge of the PTA Reflections contest at the elementary school. The entries were due on Friday, and I’ve gotten a few stragglers in today, but I’ve pretty much got all the entries. Today I counted, listed, and categorized them, and looked over the film/video, dance and music, since there are so few entries that I can pretty much judge them myself. There is only one dance entry. A 6th grade girl who did a cute dance to the song “popular” from Wicked. The theme is “My favorite place.” Although it’s a good dance, she’s a good dancer, and it’s fun to watch, I’m not getting how the Popular song has ANYTHING to do with “my favorite place.” Since she’s the only entry, I guess I have to give her an award (something like 1st place in dance–there is no second place, third place or anything else), but I feel like not. I feel like not giving her any award at all (besides the candy bar and certificate for entering) because her thing doesn’t go with the theme AT ALL. But that would be rude, I guess.

What say you? Should I be a hard nose and only award those that I think deserve to win, or should I just give her (and others that are not very heavily entered) an award?

I’ve only got about 60 entries, which seems so low to me. In another school we had over 100 entries just in visual arts, and here I’ve got 60 total. I guess I could have done more in the publicity department, but I put up posters, put messages in the newsletter and did a skit at the kick off assembly. I guess I could have done more, like make announcements in the morning announcements, sent more notes home, etc. But honestly, I think that the kids who are going to enter are going to enter, and the kids who have no interest won’t. It’s the same families that enter every year, those families that encourage it. Is it like that at your school?

Oh, and I’ve had these things here in my office since Friday, right? John has already broken one of the 3-d art things. Yep. I’m the responsible one alright.

Every morning at some dark hour–usually around 6:20– a small person creeps into my room, climbs onto my bed, wedges himself between Ryan and I, and says to me “turn around” so he can grab a hunk of my hair. Then he proceeds to squirm around, often getting his cold little feet right in the small of my warm back. He also manages to kick Ryan on the other side, twisting and turning (all while holding my hair) and trying to be quiet until he can stand it absolutely not one moment longer. Then he starts whispering in my face that it’s time for breakfast. It’s a lovely way to wake up in the morning. Especially on the weekends when we were out late and really really want to sleep in. It gets really exciting when he brings friends into our bed with him. This morning it was his older brothers large stuffed dinosaur appropriately named Rexy. I’m not sure if he went all the way into Cole’s room to get the dino before bringing him into our room, but he was there. Apparrantly he kept hitting Daddy with the dino until he asked him in his politest grumble to “not hit me with the dinosaur.” I missed that part because I must have been dozing. Or on other mornings he comes in in his soaking wet jammies because size 4 diapers do not hold in all the liquid he drinks at teeth brushing time. That one gets me up immediately, so maybe it’s a good thing.

Yesterday I won a trip to Cancun!
I KNOW!
I can hardly believe it! KODJ is doing a contest where you have to guess the correct room number between 1 and 1000. I have been trying to get through 3 times a day, and writing down the incorrect guesses when I hear them. So, at 5:00 on Friday, there I am, dialing away (like usual), and it starts ringing. Rockin’ Rob answers and says “Hi, how are you?” and I’m thinking, Could I be the right caller? Wow! Because I’ve been calling for a week and a half and never gotten to guess. He asked if I had a guess ready, and I said, “Well, I didn’t hear the 2:00 guess, can you fill me in?” and he actually did! I knew it was around 435-455, from the previous guesses who had narrowed it down, so when he said the 2:00 guess was 442–too high. So, I told him my guess was 440. This was all off the air. I told my kids to listen, because mom was going to try to win something (nothing new there), and then he comes back on with “I’ve got Paige from Highland here, and she’s ready to guess.” So, I guess room 440 and he starts messing with me, with “Are you sure? That’s really the room you are picking?” So, yes, I stuck with 440, then he “knocks” on room 440 and instead of the crickets chirping or an elephant or whatever their other wrong guess sounders are, the party music starts to play, and he says, “Paige, you are going to Cancun!”

After all the excitement and information getting, I asked if he could tell me some details, and he said he didn’t really know the whole story, but all the winners are going as a group, and he thought it was the first week in December. Well, the 1st week in December is about the only time I could absolutely NOT go, since the Bells on Temple Square Concert is December 8th, and I CAN NOT miss it. So, all night I keep thinking “what ifs” and could someone else take the trip instead of me, blah, blah, blah (I’m such a worrier!). So, today I checked the KODJ website to see if there was specific information, and found out that it’s the 16-23 of December. I will have to miss the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concerts, which are the 14-16 of December, but since we haven’t started rehearsing that music yet, I’m hoping that it won’t be a huge pain to get a sub to ring for those concerts. I’m bummed that I will miss it, because it’s an absolutely amazing experience, but how can I turn down a FREE trip to Cancun?

Now the work starts. I’ll have to figure out childcare for my 5 children, get EVERYTHING Christmas related done early, figure out how many Christmas concerts, parties and other events I will be missing and how will I get my children there, and other things that the job of Mom requires. If any of you would like to take a day to watch my kids, go ahead and sign up now, as I’m looking for volunteers. Thankfully I have my parents and Ryan’s parents who are close, and we will *I hope, I hope* be able to work that all out.

Oh my gosh, I also need to lose 10-15 pounds!

I just read this great quote, which I agree with, and will pass along to you:

Happy Friday, and remember: Friends don’t let friends pay full retail.

“The world is in need of your help. There are feet to steady, hands to grasp, minds to encourage, hearts to inspire, and souls to save. The blessings of eternity await you. ”
—President Thomas S. Monson

Let’s all try to help someone today.

The kids like to help cook around here sometimes. But more than helping, the fun is all about the aprons. And the hats. If you can find these little food service hats, any job is more fun. Like making a pb&j sandwich!

John and his little friend Lelea also like to play with the pretend food.

And for some reason, nobody can resist the stirring job. It doesn’t matter what it is, but they love to stir. This one is having a great time with the Crystal Light.

Let me start by saying I have nothing against Tupperware. I’ve gone to parties, heck, I’ve even hosted a party or two in my time. But I’ve got a lady in my neighborhood who just came to the door to see if I was going to attend her Tupperware party on Thursday (no, I have a previous engagement), and would I like to order anything? I recieved the invite last week, but since I knew I couldn’t go, I kind of forgot to RSVP or even think about it again. She gave me a catalog (which she wants returned to her today, if I can) and asked to let her know what I would like to order.

Don’t you think that is a little bit pushy? So, I looked through the catalog, and I honestly don’t see anything in there that is worth the money to me. Although I would like to be supportive in her party, I don’t want to order things I don’t want or need (for more than I want to pay). Should I just return the catalog and say there’s nothing in there that I need? Should I pass it along to a neighbor and maybe they will find something they need? Should I order something just to be nice? Should I lose the catalog in my piles of stuff and forget to give it back to her? What would you do?

Last weekend was UEA. For those of you not living in Utah, that’s the Utah Education Association “holiday” where the kids get Thursday-Monday off of school. And roughly half of the population of Utah goes south to the Happiest place on earth. We, ourselves have done Disney over UEA before, but hopefully we won’t be that stupid in the future. So, we enjoyed our vacation here at home. And we had a good time.

We:
–Went to the Zoo, which by looking at the parking lot, you would think that everyone who didn’t go to Disneyland went to the zoo, but once you are inside it wasn’t that crowded.
–Went to a movie. Barnyard. Take my advice and don’t waste your time or money on it, unless you are 5 years old.
–Went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house to fix Grandpa’s computer.
–Cole went up to his friend’s cabin for the weekend.
–The kids played with cousins while Mom and Dad went out to dinner with some neighborhood friends.
–Went to church (nothing new there, but I just thought I’d include it on our list. It was 3 hours of exhausting work for me, however. Ryan didn’t go because of an allergy attack, so it was me and 4 kids (no Cole) squished in not enough bench space with John on my lap for the entire sacrament meeting–ugh! Then I go sucked into the nursery because there were only 2 adults and 18 kids.)
–Went to the mall to have the kids’ pictures taken. Don’t ask me why that experience takes four hours, but it does. But they turned out cute. Here’s proof.
–Went to Boondocks, where we drove bumper boats, soaking each other in the process (great for a chilly day, wouldn’t you say?), rode go-carts, played miniature golf, played laser tag (Cole did that one 6 times, I think) and did lots of arcade things. The best part was that I didn’t pay a dime for the 7 of us because I had won some free passes and gift certificates!
–Oh, and we got a new pet. A turtle that Cole thinks he’s calling Rachael. Rachael? For a turtle? I’m trying to convince him that Rachael is not the proper name for a turtle, and I keep calling it other things when I walk by and say hi to it, but it might actually stick.

So, how was your weekend?

You know I love birds, right? I’ve had some type of birds off and on throughout my life, and yes, Tina, there was that unfortunate incident with a parakeet when I was younger, but I honestly believed that he would be cold at night and therefore put him by the heat vent that night. But let’s not drag up old sad stories about unintentional pet torture. In college I had some finches that were repeatedly threatened by Larry and Robin (“let’s make some “finch fries, shall we?”) but they survived and were fun to have around. Now we have cockatiels. We’ve actually had Sundance longer than we’ve had our oldest child, if you can believe that. He’s been through a lot at our house, photographed numerous times, , and even been the subject of a few art projects.
We also have ZuZu, who we’ve had for about 8 years, if my math is correct.

This Summer we got our third bird, a baby we named Popcorn. Since he’s young and energetic, he’s quite a climber.

He discovered that it’s really fun to hop over to the curtains and sit there and look out the window. It’s kind of fun. He sings, looks outside, and is quite pleasant. Well, soon he taught the other birds to come and sit on the curtain. So, the three of them now like to sit on the curtain and look out the window. I don’t mind the birds being on the curtain, what I do mind is the three of them sittin on the curtain (their new favorite place to be) all day and pooping.

The poop gets on the window sill, on the curtain, and mostly on the floor. Ick. One bird pooping on the floor is a little mess, but three of them? It turns into a big mess. More mess than I want to deal with some days. So, I let it get worse until I’m grossed out and can’t stand to look at my floor, and I lock the poor birdies in their cage while I clean the floor, then feel sorry for them and let them out, so they can poop all over my window sill and floor yet again.

What I need around here is some kind of bird potty training. Any ideas?