Category: Uncategorized (Page 94 of 118)

Cole leaves for a week of scout camp today. One week, and I won’t have any news about how he’s doing unless there’s some emergency. I’m putting my trust in Brother Haws. I think yesterday Cole must have been trying to annoy the heck out of me so I won’t be an emotional weepy mom at seeing him go today. He didn’t give me a list of what he needed until Sunday, and didn’t get that stuff organized until Sunday night. At 9:00 he said, “Oh. I’m supposed to take all my stuff over to Brother Haws’ house tonight.” So, at 9:30 (which is kind of late to be making social calls, I think), he and Ryan took his stuff over. I’m sure he’ll have a Fabulous Time, and I have faith that I can keep it together without worrying about him excessively. I just dropped him off, and the scout leaders PROMISED they would take care of my boy.

Robin’s here with her kids and her vanagan. The kids were so excited to sleep out there last night! There were 6 kids crammed into bed space for about 4, and they were chatting and laughing all night. Since my window is the closest to where they were parked, I could hear them chatting and lauging all night. At 11:20 or so I went out there with my mean mom face and said if I had to come out again and tell them to be quiet, they were all coming INSIDE to sleep. That got them. I didn’t hear very much noise from them after that.

Thursday night I went to a concert by Kurt Bestor. We had a little bit of trouble finding the concert because
a-I didn’t actually have the tickets tell me where the concert was, and
b-I’m an idiot,
But we did eventually find the Rose Wagner Theater, not to be confused with Libby Gardner Hall–they are not interchangeable, as we found out. I took three friends with me to this fabulous concert, and we had FRONT ROW SEATS! Well, two of us had front row seats, and the other two were on row N or something like that, but at intermission they came and joined us in the front, since there was no one else there. As my friend Maranda said, “Kurt’s pretty easy on the eyes,” and his music was fabulous. I really enjoyed hearing the stories of where he was in his life when he wrote those songs. I liked it so much, I bought the new CD. Fabulous.

On Saturday night, we went to see Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband in concert. It was kind of a last minute decision to go, since I had won tickets to the Beach Boys for Saturday night and we were planning on going to that. But when I learned that Ryan Shupe was in town and mentioned it to my friend Mich, she got really excited, and soon the tickets were bought. We took our two oldest sons, and they had a blast. We had a blast, too. We saw Julene and Italo there, too, so it became a family and freind fest. We were of course way back on the lawn seating, but it was still a great show. We love Ryan Shupe!

Sunday I taught my lesson in RS, and it went just fine. Not the best lesson ever, but it was still fine. And there were treats, so I think people enjoy my lessons just for the fact that I feed them.

Today we’ll be doing…I have no idea. But I’m sure we’ll have some fun. Oh, I know–We’re hosting the group FHE, and I’m planning on doing a “Father’s Day Game Show.” I’ll have to let you know how it goes.

This picture does not go with my rambling thoughts, I just wanted to put it up.

We have a new pet in our household, and we’re all very excited about it! As many of you know, Ryan is severely allergic to dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, guinea pigs–basically anything with fur. So we are kind of limited in our selection of pets to….let’s see….birds and….uh…reptiles?…maybe fish, too. So, you get the picture that we can’t really have a lot of pets aound here, right?

So, imagine our surprise when Ryan allowed, no INVITED (actually, he ordered) a new pet into the house.

We’re all really excited about the new pet, and let him roam freely around the house. He’s very good, doesn’t make a whole lot of noise, and picks up our crumbs. He will choke on larger items like barrettes, though, so we have to be careful of those things. When he’s not scavenging around looking for crumbs, he sleeps quietly in his spot, and doesn’t bother us at all. I think he’s the perfect pet!

The kids are excited, too. They have named him “Dust Bunny”, and I think they’ve been secretly feeding it stuff (like marshmallows). But they got really excited about cleaning up their rooms so the new pet could be free to roam around their rooms–even under the bed. So, as far as pets go, I’d highly recomend this one!

Here’s Jenna at her preschool graduation:

And here’s Cole at his 6th grade graduation. Notice how he dressed up so nicely for the occasion:

Yesterday I got to be back in the Primary, as a sub for the music lady who was out of town.

It would have been so fun, had I not been in a near state of exhaustion from the weekend festivities. But it was still fun.

Anyway, little 6 year old boy (who will not be named) gets up to do the scripture and prayer. His mom helps him with the scripture, and then he says the prayer, which went something like this:

“Heavenly Father, thank you for church;
Thank you for our families;
Please help us to be reverent;
Please help us to die like Jesus;
In the name of Jesus Christ, AMEN.

So, I turn to pianist and say, “But I don’t want to die like Jesus,” and bust up laughing!

So, there you have it–the joys of primary.

Today I planted our garden. Yes, I know it’s probably a bit late to be planting things, and we should have gotten it done a couple of weeks ago, but we didn’t manage to get it done before we went on vacation, and subsequently, I got it done today. There are 4 healthy tomato plants (curtesy of Costco), two healthy rhubarb plants that we’ve had for a couple of years (from Ryan’s dad), and today I planted: corn, yellow squash, watermellon, pumpkins, lettuce and carrots. I’m actually excited about the garden, and I hope I can keep up on the watering, weeding and all the other work that goes along with that. I figure if I get one watermellon, that will pay for my packet of seeds. I’ll need one pumpkin, one bag’s worth of lettuce, and one bag of carrots to make the cost of my seeds worth it. I don’t know how many ears of corn we’ll need to break even, but I sure hope we get some corn out of this. John saw the seed packet on the counter said, “Corn on cob? We having corn on cob?” So I need to hide the seed packet or go and get some corn on the cob for dinner.

Ryan is still allergetic (nice made-up word, don’t you think?), and the Russion Olive trees out in the back yard are especially bloomy right now, so I also mowed the lawn. I didn’t do the greatest job of it, and there are some missed spots, but at least I did it, and Ryan didn’t have to go out sneezing and snuffing to do it. But since I hadn’t really planned on mowing the lawn when I went out there this morning (and we have a big lawn and it takes a couple of hours to do it) I ended up with a a tiny sunburn. But I could use a little color on my skin, and it’s not hurting, so I’m ok. Luckily I wasn’t wearing a v-neck, or my neck would be red and flaming.

So, it was a nice day of yardwork. Now I’ve got to get to work on the inside of the house.

Maybe 5 kids is too many. Maybe the house isn’t big enough for all of us. Maybe some of “us” just need to go OUTSIDE! And stop asking for snacks, drinks, shows, help, etc. It’s not even summer and already I’m tired of it. I will SO enjoy this last short fleeting week of sending the kids to the bus, waving goodbye and then not seeing them until the bus brings them home.

I’m just grumpy. It’s PMS, itchy allergy eyes, a messy house, a sick husband and all that stuff combined to make me grumpy. I just need to get the kids busy playing with friends or taking a nap, and then we can all relax a bit.

Happy Memorial Day to you, too.

So, school get’s out next week, but for the most part, summer is already starting. We’ve got parties, barbeques, vacation last week–we’re pretty much already into summer. Let’s face it, the kids aren’t going to be doing any work at school in the next 3 1/2 days of school, are they?

I’d like to be organized this summer. Like, have set days to go to the library, jobs done in the mornings, play dates on certain days, field trips on other days, etc.. But who does that? Melinda? So, I’d like some advice, tips, hints on how to get your kids to do jobs, help keep the house clean, and have fun. Because if they don’t help out, we will never go and do anything fun because I will only worry about the state of the house. And if it’s too cluttered and dirty, Mommy starts to go crazy.

So, Please–give me your best hints of things that have worked for you in the summer to keep kid occupied, happy and not whining (it would be nice if Mommy were happy, occupied and not whining, too, but that may be too much to hope for.)

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Today we have a big barbeque for about 70 people planned (Bell Choir and families), and we’re just trying to figure out what to do. Do we cancel and try to reschedule ? Do we carry on and pretend that it will be warm? Ugh. Darn weather.

I had a dream I was back in primary, and when asked for the opening song, I just sat there for a long time. I looked through the book and couldn’t find a single song I knew. The primary president finally grabbed a book and said, “We’ll be singing #49,” which was something about Nephi. So, I turned to that page and I didn’t know that song AT ALL! It was a weird feeling.

Sometime later in the dream( or maybe in a different dream, I don’t know) I was going downtown to the summer Olympics, which what do you know, were being hosted in Salt Lake City! Wow! How cool is that? We get two Olympics in less than 10 years! How exciting! I”m going to go to all kinds of stuff, and the opening ceremonies, and closing ceremonies, and, … and… Oh. I guess it’s just a dream. Darn.

And on another note. I don’t know how much more of Lost I can take. Too weird! It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Here’s Michael taking off in the little boat (like he’s really going to get away–right!), Lock is blowing up the hatch by not pushing the button, Jack and Kate and Sawyer are drugged with little darts, and Henry captures them and away they go? WHATEVER!