Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 118)

Bryce Canyon is AMAZING. I think it would be stunning in any kind of weather. The days we were there for spring break, we had sun, rain, wind and snow, all in the same day.

I don’t think I would EVER run out of beautiful sights to take pictures of. We found this log with our initials carved in it. How sweet is that?

Jenna was near the edge here, and I freaked out a bit, yelling at her to get back. The kids made fun of me for it for the rest of the trip. Nice, aren’t they? A mother gets worried that her kids are going to fall off cliffs, ok?

Besides the stunning rocks, there are some amazing trees. Loved this one.

Since the day was overcast, we didn’t get many of the brilliant reds, but we did get some gorgeous views of the winter and snow.

When we went out to this point, it was SO windy. We asked someone to take our picture. You probably can’t tell, but we are freezing at this point.

Natalie’s hair was a bit wild.

There weren’t many opportunities to get a blue sky, so when I found one, I had to snap away.

We didn’t do much hiking, but at sunrise or sunset (can’t remember which one) point, we went down the trail a bit. Because the view was stunning.

That’s me, by the way.

AT our last stop of the day, we wanted to get a family picture all together. Tried the timer thing but there was nothing to rest the camera on. Ryan tried putting it in a tree.
Let’s just say that didn’t work. But some hikers came by eventually and were more than willing to take a picture for us (most people were). Should have brought my picstand, right?

I read a post about how you can save a whole bunch of money using the name your price option on priceline.com. I studied the hotels, the maps, read the tips, and did a bunch of research about what hotels are where, then tried to place my bid. In Bryce Canyon, we got a decent room at Ruby’s Inn for about $25 dollars less than the listed rate. And the room was nice enough and we almost all fit (there was the issue of the blinking light bulb all night that made it so I couldn’t sleep and had nightmares about the room catching on fire and us having to evacuate, but that’s just me and my crazy light sleeper ness).

But when we got to Mesa to the Quality Inn, things weren’t so smooth. I checked in and found that for the low low price that I had PRE-PAID, we were given a single queen studio. Just a queen bed and a bathroom. No couch, no pull out anything. Hmm. 6 of us on one queen bed? I explained politely that this was my first time using priceline, and that since it didn’t let me choose my room size, was there any way we could have a room with at least two queen beds or a bed and a couch? Front desk lady was not very understanding and explained that what I paid for was one queen, and I would have to call priceline and see if I could change my reservation. So I called priceline right there in the lobby, and they called the hotel for me and tried to help negotiate a better room. She would not budge. I ended up paying the hotel an extra $53 dollars to upgrade to a room with two DOUBLE BEDS and a pull out couch. Fine. Done. I wished that there was a manager or just SOMEONE ELSE to negotiate with, but it was just her. The perils of checking in on a Sunday afternoon.

As we hauled our stuff up to our room, we figured it wouldn’t be THAT bad and we could figure something out. Ryan said, “are we only staying 5 nights? I thought we were leaving on Saturday.” Another mistake on my part. I had not reserved enough days. No way am I going back down to the lobby to ask if we can reserve one more night. We’ll figure that out later.

Can I just say that a double bed is not big enough for two overweight large adults? Let’s just put that out there right now.
And not only is it a double bed, but it’s RIGHT up against the wall.

As we went to make up the beds and put the kids to bed, we pulled out the couch to see that it’s broken. There are no springs connecting the bottom of the bed, and part of the support thingys are not there. What to do, what to do? We called to the front to ask for sheets and blankets for the couch bed, and also told them that the springs were missing, the bed was kind of broken. The girl at the front desk just said ok. 45 minutes or so later, and we are so tired. Ryan and I went down to the front desk to at least get the blankets so we can make up the broken bed and go to sleep. At the front desk, the girl said, “Didn’t you call down to request those blankets?” yes. Yes, we did. And now we are here in person to collect them.

“You said the bed is broken? our maintenance man isn’t here after 6, so I don’t know what we can do about that” she said.
I wonder why she didn’t just say that on the phone? At this point, I just wanted to dang extra blankets and we would make do with a broken pull out couch. But she said (kind of grudgingly), “Would you like to switch rooms?” IS THERE another room available? She looked it up and realized that the room next door to ours was empty (From the looks of the parking lot, it didn’t look like the hotel was very full at all, so I wasn’t surprised). We said, that yes, we would change rooms. Ryan texted the kids from the lobby and told them to pack up their stuff, we would be switching rooms.

Maybe they gave us the oldest yuckiest room they had just because we were priceline customers. I don’t know.

This room isn’t any bigger or nicer than the other room, but it does have a newer couch that is not broken. We were able to quickly get all of our stuff out of the room, empty the fridge, bring stuff over to the other room, and get the couch bed made up in pretty quick time.

(I don’t even feel bad that they’ll have to clean two rooms for us. Is that wicked of me or what?)

Exhausted, Ryan and I laid down on the DOUBLE bed. It’s about half the size of our California King bed at home. I love my bed at home. I love my mattress. I love the fact that I am not wedged between a wall and my sweet husband and that I can actually sleep. Every time one of us moved, then it woke the other one of us. Really. I could NOT get comfortable, and was terribly cramped. After several hours of tossing and turning and disturbing Ryan’s sleep as well, I flipped so that my feet were at the head of the bed and my head was at the feet. This put my head away from the wall just a bit, and gave me a little room. Ryan, of course, was a bit shocked when he reached over and felt a foot, but it was the only way I could get any sleep at all. I thought about sleeping on the floor, but–ew–. Plus there weren’t any extra blankets for that, so I stayed in that darn small bed. When it was finally morning, I got up. Let Ryan get an hour or two of sleep without me smashing him.

Night two at this hotel we got organized and fared better. We borrowed two twin air mattresses from Robin, and kicked the kids out of the other double bed. That left Ryan and I a bed each. Greedy? Possibly. Necessary? Absolutely. We slept MUCH better. The kids didn’t mind so much sleeping on the floor all in the same room, although we had to move around all the existing furniture to get it to fit.

The redeeming qualities of this quality inn, however, would have to be the breakfast, and the pool. The kids are loving swimming in the pool every day, and although it is a tad bit cold, it’s a beautiful pool area. Also, free breakfast for 6 of us is certainly nice. And waffles? Yum.

So, that’s our experience so far. Not sure if we are going to book this hotel for one more night, or just go somewhere else. Somewhere that I can choose before committing to paying.

Sorry, priceline, you may have lost my business.

I didn’t take a substitute job today because I didn’t want to. I just wanted to do some spring cleaning at home, and enjoy a bit of time without anyone else there.
So, once I got the kitchen cleaned up a bit this morning, I put on my painting clothes (no, there will be no pictures of me in my painting clothes, thank you very much) and went to work on a project I started back before the Taiwanese girls came.

I think I know why I like painting so much.
Just think.
For about $4 in paint, I can take a small piece, and with a few afternoons of work, I can transform a table, or a dresser. I can take a plain or ugly table, and make it cute again.
With a little more time and money (ok, quite a bit more time and money), I can change a room. I love that. I can change it.

Here’s the table before I started. I took it out to the porch to sand it because it had some water damage and needed quite a bit of sanding.
See that cute kitty who was helping me?
Good kitty. I’m sure she was wondering what I was doing.
This table was actually given to me by a friend. I quite liked it in white but decided since I was going to paint it I might as well paint it a cute happy color. If I don’t like it I’ll just give it to one of the kids for their rooms.

I wish I could transform other areas in my life with just a can of paint and a brush.
Don’t like your hair? Paint it.
Don’t like your body? No problem, let’s just paint it up nice and we can make it younger and thinnner, with no aches and pains.
Aren’t happy with a relationship with a friend or a loved one? There’s a paint for that.

But darn it. Life is not fixed by a can of paint.
To change your life, your body, your relationships, that takes work, and effort, and commitment, and sometimes tears.

Maybe that’s why I love the transformations I can do with paint or fabric so much.

It’s tax time here, and Ryan has been dutifully working on the taxes. He had everything pretty much done, and was waiting for my w-2 from my substitute teaching last year. Hmmm. I didn’t teach at all during fall semester, and I really didn’t teach much last spring, either, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a big number.

$875.

Woo-Hoo.

Add that to the $1200 I made teaching my chime choir last year and I earned just over $2000. Wow. Nothing like hearing that to give my self worth a hit. My 17 year old daughter makes more than me working at Wendy’s. (Of course, I did win about $500 cash and some awesome tickets and other prizes..sadly no trips this year… from radio stations, but that is thankfully not included in the taxable income)

BUT, if you read this article here, it paints a different picture.

” According to the U.S. Census, there were 5 million stay-at-home moms in 2010 — down from 5.1 million in 2009 and 5.3 million in 2008.

According to Salary.com, the average stay-at-home mom’s task load equates to a 95-hour work week. This breaks down to 40 hours at base pay and 54.7 hours of overtime on their “mom duties.” This is good for an annual salary of $112,940.45, or $17.80 an hour.”

That makes me feel a little better.

Thankfully, my husband has never criticized my choice to be a stay at home mom. Even as the kids are getting bigger and in school all day, I haven’t felt pressure to work outside the home. I work because I want to work, and I take care of my family and do the laundry, grocery shopping, coupon clipping, piano lessons, making dinner, homework helper, etc. because I love my family.

So, there, taxes. I may not have brought in a bunch of money, but I support and help the one who does, and that is worth it.

Have you heard of Studio C? It’s a BYU sketch comedy group that does great sketches, which, unlike SNL, are clean and ok for kids to watch.

Although probably not so great for them to watch them NON stop like they tend to watch things.

Anyway, I saw on facebook that they were taking email requests to be part of their live studio audience, so I sent in an email request.

A couple days later I got an email telling me that my email had been selected, and that I could bring my two guests (Ryan and Jenna) to the taping on Friday night at 6:30.

I arranged to take John to my sister’s house so he wouldn’t be alone (Megan and Natalie would be gone to Youth Conference Friday night), and asked Ryan to come home early so we could get over there by 5:00 and stand in line.

We got there about 5:20, actually. A little later than we had planned, but the line wasn’t that long. We got in line with the other 30 or so people in line and were just prepared to be cold for a while. Then the person behind us asked if this was the stand by line or the ticketed line. Oh no, are there more than one line? Turns out it was the stand by line, so we went inside to the ticketed line, and they gave us a number and told us that if there were seats available, we would get in. WHAT? We missed it? Because we stood in the wrong line? Ugh. We group number 3 in this “stand by even though you have tickets” line. It was 5:30.

Dang. But we’ve been in these kind of stand by lines before, and many times have gotten in. We all had books and stuff to read, and the college students in front of us were playing a fun charades game with their phone, so we weren’t bored.

The two groups in front of us got in. We were number 3. We did not get in. The guy told us that there were over 19 thousand requests for tickets for this taping, and that some general authorities were actually in the audience that night. Great. We were bumped by general authorities.

But we still got to watch all the sketches of the night in a different room, where they piped in the live action. It’s kind of like going to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the conference center and being sent to watch it broadcast in the assembly hall. You still get to see the show, but it’s not quite the same.

The cast did come up to our little room and give high fives, answer a few questions, and generally say thanks for watching. It was a fun night.

My neighbor works as a casting director for a company that does informercials. John did a little bit for a product similar to Dream Lights, and John and I were part of a focus group for Flippeez (one of my cub scouts is in the flippeez commercial there. He’s the one in the blue hat.)

Anyway, a lot of people in our ward and neighborhood are often recruited to participate in these experiences. Monday we had a film crew at our house filming for a new type of shovel.

They needed a walk or driveway that wasn’t shoveled. It turned out to be too cold and everything was frozen, but they ended up using our sidewalk anyway. They just shoveled some snow from the grass onto the sidewalk.

The cat wanted to know what was going on, and why would people be putting snow back ON the walk?

They didn’t need me in the shot. They had filmed enough women and needed more men, so my former home teacher was the “actor” for this one.

(I didn’t want to be in the way at all, so I took these pictures from inside the house)
I won’t show the product because it might not be released yet. But it was fun to watch them film him, then have him talk about the product.

I told Ryan about it, and he’s such a skeptic about everything, he said, “Don’t let them pay you in shovels!” I actually wouldn’t mind trying out that shovel. It can’t be worse than the shovels we have.

Then on Wednesday, I went to their studio and was a test subject for a face lift type product.
(It’s similar to this product, but not the same.) I was supposed to not wear much makeup and don’t do my hair fancy. That sounds about like every day for me. I also had to bring a few different bright colored tops and a dress. Oh, and makeup so I could do myself up for the after shots. When I got there, they took me to a dressing room and looked at my clothing choices, and picked out a pink top with a royal blue sweater. I actually would not have put the two together, but I guess on camera the combination looked good.

I had a few minutes before they needed me, so I did manage to get a couple shots of me. This is the BEFORE.

Then it was my turn. They took me into the studio, where I got to sit on a stool and look into a whole bunch of lights. Seriously, I was practically blinded. I smiled and felt awkward but it wasn’t hard.

Then I got to glam it up for the AFTER shots. I put on quite a bit of makeup, and this little device that tightens the skin. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say more about it. When I went back to the studio to film the after, the camera man said, “Oh, you look SO beautiful, and they let me see myself on camera before they filmed my “testimonials”, and I did look pretty good. The hardest part was talking about the product. Don’t move your head too much or you are out of the shot. Don’t look away. Don’t let your eyes wander. Say the name of the product correctly. Look happy. Anyway, I tried. Don’t know how much, if any of that footage they will use, but it was kind of fun.

They they decided they were going to film me actually putting the thing on. That meant they had to bring the camera and lighting into that dressing room where I took the pictures. I wish I had gotten my camera out to show all the lights, the camera, me and three guys in that room. It was pretty tight, and kind of crazy. I had to look in the mirror, NOT look at the camera, hold up my hair, snap in this little thing, all while smiling. Then I had to ADMIRE myself in all my beauty in the mirror. Really? That was difficult for me, but I have done some ACTING, so it was time to ACT. This took FOREVER as he kept having me do this over and over, getting closer and closer for zoom shots. I was there over almost 2 1/2 hours, when originally I had been scheduled for 1 1/2 hours, but he just kept filming. AWKWARD. The funniest was me looking at myself in the mirror, smiling, and admiring my face and how wonderful it was. NOT NATURAL, I tell you. No one does that, but yet, that’s what they show on commercials.

It was fun, and I do get paid a small amount. So, who knows, maybe someday you’ll see me in a commercial.

Daughter, when asked to take the ceramic nativity down to the storage room: “What would you do if I dropped this box?”
Me, aghast: “You mean that nativity that is very precious to me because it was made by my Grandmother?”
Daughter: “She made that? She didn’t make that!”
Me: “She did make that, and she is dead now and I can’t replace it!”
Daughter: “So, would you kill me?”
Me: I would cry.
Daughter: For how long?
Me: Let’s just NOT drop it and NOT find out, ok?

Two weeks without school! Christmas and New Year’s and My birthday all wrapped up in two weeks.

We were quite lazy around here. After the big parties and things, the kids had nowhere specific to go. We also didn’t have anyone come and stay with us this year. Where are my Arizona peeps and why aren’t they here to entertain us? No worries.

Besides watching a LOT of Netflix, playing a lot of video games, and reading a lot, the kids DID play with friends, we went to Boondocks, went to a movie, and even went out to eat. We went downtown to see some of the Christmas decorations, too. I especially wanted the kids to see the window displays at the Grand America Hotel.

We had fun looking at all the windows and checking off our cards to get our treat at the end.

I wrenched my shoulder, so I did a whole lot of hanging around the house, too.

We played games, cooked, ate lots of goodies, had MORE parties, made more goodies, and capped it all off with flu shots.

At one point I MADE the kids go outside and build snowmen. I really did. I’m like the meanest mom EVER (at least that’s what the kids tell me).

We did manage to do some cleaning and organizing, especially Ryan. He fixed the dishwasher right before the break, fixed the back of my Suburban, and fixed his chair that he broke. Handy guy. Since he had about a week off of work, he was determined to clean up his office. Wow! I wish I had gotten that far on my office. I did a lot of filing, got my music ready for next semester, and nearly cleaned off the desk in my office. We cleaned the mudroom floor (What? There is a floor in there?) and filled 3 HUGE garbage bags full of stuff to donate. The kids also went through and got rid of many of their clothes that don’t fit, and they each got their rooms cleaned and vacuumed at least once.

Megan did work some, and she’s been working on a few art projects, so at least the time is not completely wasted for her. But talk about college or get online to accept the scholarships she has been offered? No WAY! Still got a ways to go with getting that one ready for the next stage of her life.

And I did some knitting. Me. Seriously! I learned how to do this ruffle scarf from a friend in bells, and I worked on it backstage during the Christmas concerts. Then I made two more like that for my girls. I had one more skein of fancy yarn and thought I could try another scarf, although this one isn’t like the others and I hope it’s long enough. We’ll see.

So, yes, I knit now. Who would have guessed it.

While I’m sad to see the end of the vacation, I’m ready for everyone to get back to their routines. Ryan left this morning for a quick trip to VEGAS for the CES trade show. The kids leave tomorrow and I’ll have the house to myself for a few hours. I need to get myself on the treadmill and finish cleaning up my office. And probably go grocery shopping if I can get my coupons organized. I have goals for the month and need to get out of this lazy fog that I’ve been in. I’m sure it will be a great shock to the kids when they have to go to school for the whole day, and they will miss their beloved nexflix, but that’s how it goes.