Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: seasons (Page 3 of 5)

Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.

September 17, 2010 / / 3 Comments

September. It’s a month of changes, isn’t it? Kids go back to school.

We try to adjust to the new schedules and be efficient with the time we have.
The garden rewards us for our hard work during the summer.
The fruit trees also.
The air starts to cool off and the weather is beautiful.

With all the changes, I realized I needed to change it up, too. I went for a haircut–it had been WAY too long since I’d visited my friend, the stylist. I asked that she put some red in my hair. We had tried to do a little bit of red last time, but it didn’t take, so she went bolder this time. Since I’m not really one to do BOLD in any way, the end result was a bit of a shock to me.

I’ll show you some pictures, but please understand that this is just me, taking one handed pictures of my head while sitting here in my office. Nothing portrait worthy or anything, ok?

Here’s the basic cut. It’s a bit shorter than I was expecting, but nothing I can’t live with. I like how it’s stacked in the back, and I LOVE the color variation in the back.

I don’t know if you can see the different colors, but there’s some pretty strong reds in there.

My 14 year old said, “Mom, those are not natural colors. You would not be allowed to wear your hair like that to school.”
“They ARE natural colors, my dear. It’s not just all MY natural color.” Take that, know it all teenaged daughter.

Anyway, I think it looks really cool, and I love the red underneath, although you can’t really see it in my high quality self portrait.

Speaking of portraits, my sister needed models for a music and the spoken word painting she was doing, so I conned two friends to come and POSE with me. She needed some soccer moms for this story:

Three mothers were sitting together at a school ballgame. Two of them were gushing about their children’s talents and latest achievements. One’s son had just won an athletic scholarship, and another’s daughter had just been chosen as valedictorian. The third mother’s son had no such accomplishments, but she seemed unruffled, even happy about the success of the other two. She almost sounded as proud of those children as their own mothers were.

Later, when asked why she hadn’t felt jealous, she simply explained that it was much easier to celebrate than to compete. She certainly wanted success for her child as well, but she knew that victories for others don’t mean failures for us. She felt confident that her son would excel in his own way and in his own time.

The ability to forget oneself and praise another’s achievement is a key to contented living. It’s natural to feel pangs of envy at another’s success—as if their success cancels out our own. But, in reality, life is a roller coaster, and we each have our ups and downs. When we remember and cherish our own values and growth, we realize we wouldn’t trade places with anyone else. When we are confident in the motives of our own hearts, we can then reach out to commend others for a job well done or good fortune that comes their way.

It was fun, although I think I ended up looking kind of like a spaz. I was not chosen to be the serene mother happy for her friends. If you want to see the finished product, that Music and the Spoken Word will be rebroadcast on KBYU this Sunday at 8, I think.

I also went last week and gave my wedding ring a makeover. When we were getting married, everyone got gold wedding rings. I don’t think there were that many other options. Gold. But I don’t really wear gold jewelry. My watch, my earrings, my other rings are all silver. So for about a year, I’ve been looking for a nice ring I could get as a replacement. Then a friend told me I could just go and get my ring “dipped” or rhodium plated. So easy! I took it to the jewelers, waited 3 days, paid them $36 and got my ring back all shiney and sparkly in white gold.

Again, I apologize for the quality of my pictures. You can’t really see the silverness of the ring, or the sparklyness of the diamonds. But trust me, it’s beautiful. I love it because it’s still my wedding ring, but now it’s silver. It feels like a new ring, and I’m happy with it. Now if I could just keep those diamonds shiney ALL the time. Avoid hand lotion? I don’t think so.

Tomorrow we’re hosting the first ever “day of birthday parties” here. I’ve rented a velcro wall

and we’re having John’s party in the morning and Natalie’s party in the afternoon. So, I just need to go and buy large amounts of food and snacks, and hopefully the kids will entertain themselves!

Hang in there little plants

May 24, 2010 / / 2 Comments

I think it must still be March around these parts. I knew it was supposed to be “colder and rainy” today, but snow? Really?

Here are the girls as they were leaving for school. It’s the last week of school, which is supposed to be full of field days, parties, and sun. *Sigh*

Here’s my “snowball bush”.

By the time John left about an hour later, there was even more snow.

And all my flowers and little garden veggies that I planted? Are they going to be ok? I hope so. It’s not freezing out there, it’s just snowing. Hopefully the plants don’t really know the difference between snow and rain, they’re just getting wet, right?

Hang in there, little plants. It will be warmer soon.

I hope.

Tulip Festival?

April 25, 2010 / / 1 Comment

I’ve been wanting to take the kids to the tulip festival at Thanksgiving point. I thought we might go yesterday, since the weather was nice, but we ended up working in the yard and garden, which is also a good thing.

But it looks like we’ve got our own tulip festival going on here. Ryan was so kind to post this little video onto youtube so that I could share it with you. It starts slow, and it’s not all that exciting, but take a look at the kind of visitors we have late at night around here.

I guess I need to get more irish spring around those flowers if I want to save them.

And in the spirit of strange things that the porch cam has recorded, here’s another one. It makes me laugh every time I watch it.

And we did ask Cole if it was ok to make fun of him on the blog. He’s a good natured soul so he didn’t object too much. I don’t know what he was making a face about, but it just cracks me up.

My favorite season

April 22, 2010 / / 2 Comments

I absolutely love Spring. Love, Love, Love it! All the trees look like they are dressing up for the season, the daffodils and then the tulips push their way up even when it seem illogical for any flowers to start blooming.

It’s cold, then warm, then cold again, and so when that perfectly beautiful day comes along that is not too hot and not too cold, you appreciate it all that much more. People come out of their homes and end the hibernation that has been going on for the past 5 or 6 months. We begin to see our neighbors once again as they begin to examine their yards and the work that must be done. It’s kind of like a mini reunion –“Hi! Don’t you look good! Where’ve you been?” they say. “Oh, you know…..inside.” we answer.

The trees are all decked out in their fancy spring finery. They explode in color and the gorgeousness is almost overwhelming. After a long winter of bare trees, it is such a joy to look out the window and see them overflowing with blossoms. I feel like breaking into a rousing chorus of “Popcorn popping on the apricot tree!”
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Yes, there’s that annoying high pollen count, but we don’t want to talk about that right now.

In spring I start to feel like anything is possible. Even exercise. I seriously have the urge to get outside and get moving. Maybe go out walking or do some strenuous gardening. Speaking of gardening, I love to work in my garden and flowers in the spring. I love to get out and pull the weeds, plant summer bulbs, even plant vegetables. I planted lettuce this week, and I was thrilled to see a couple of repeat plants from last year. It looks like lettuce and hollyhocks so far, but there may be some other volunteers there as well. It’s too early to plant tomatoes or the cabbage that Jenna brought home from school, but when it’s dry again this weekend I plan to get the peas planted, and maybe head to the local garden store and buy some other tender plants.

So, even though today it’s snowing, I know the snow won’t last long. It will give way to green grass and happy flowering trees. I will breathe in the scent of fresh, new life. I will relish in the feelings of newness and the smells of blooms. I will enjoy my favorite season and be thankful for the beauty that is spring!

Snow way!

March 5, 2010 / / 3 Comments

science fair 110

Yesterday it was a wonderful day with temps in the 50s. I went to the school with no coat. By lunchtime the wind was starting and then the rain. And then the snow. When we woke up this morning, the yard looked like this.
science fair 103

And the view from the back door is this.
science fair 101

But as luck would have it, the kids have the day off of school today, so I have some cheap labor for the driveway shoveling.
science fair 106

So that whole March coming in like a lamb thing? Maybe we have to rethink that.

It’s finally here

November 13, 2009 / / 7 Comments

Tonight is concert night! Can I have a “Hollah”? Thanks. We only have one night this year, as last year we had two nights and a dress rehearsal that was open to the public. They tell us it’s too expensive to do two night of concerts. Okay. I hope that means that our concert tonight will be packed. They give out way more tickets than the Tabernacle can seat, so it’s always a good idea to arrive early. I am thankful that I have not contracted any major sickness. I’ve had some days of not feeling well, and my throat hurt last night, but I’ve tried to get extra sleep whenever I can, drink lots, take lots of vitamins, and be liberal with the lysol and germ-x. We’ve spent a lot of time working on this concert, and it’s going to be really fun. Since it’s so early in the season, it’s not really an all out Christmas concert. In fact, it’s called “A little Christmas, a little fun”. We’re excited about the “fun” part. We’ve got a saxophone, harp, and strings joining us, as well as the woodwinds and piano and organ. And some fun songs. As long as we don’t mess anything up, right?

**

Today I’m hoping that my daughter stands up to a girl who’s kind of bullying her. On Wednesday, when I picked her up from school, she was very thirsty and chugged a capri-sun drink like it was nothing. Aren’t you drinking anything in the day? I asked her. “Oh, this girl stole my milk. Again,” she told me. What? Who’s stealing your milk? It turns out “some girl” who she says she doesn’t know her name but she’s in two of her classes, just comes up to her on B days and takes the milk right off her lunch tray. It’s happened for three days now. The rest of the carpool was getting in the car and hearing this, and they were outraged. “Who’s this girl? I’ll come and beat her up,” said her friend Lauren. “Oh, wait, I’m in class at that time on B days.” They all rallied and told her to be loud and tell this girl off, but Megan is really quiet and shy at school, it seems, and just lets this girl take her milk. She doesn’t have any friends to sit with on these days, and usually just sits alone. All of her friend have the other lunch. How sad is this? And aggravating, because I would like to go there and stand up for my child, tell this other kid that she has NO RIGHT to just take her milk. On the other hand, it’s just a milk, and maybe this bully kid is really starving and doesn’t have money to buy her own milk and thought my daughter was nice and is therefore taking the milk. Probably not. One of her carpool friends said SHE had this lunch on B days and would sit by her and protect her from this girl, but when I reminded daughter to sit by her, she kind of shrugged. Oh, what to do, what to do?

Our solution was to bring home lunch today. Then she won’t be in the line buying lunch, she can just go right to a table (hopefully), avoiding this girl outright. And if mean girl comes by, she wouldn’t dare take her lunch that she brought from home, would she? I want to just be there, and watch what goes down. If only I had one of those invisibility cloaks from Harry Potter. I could just sneak in there and watch and nobody would know I was there. Or send a spy. A spy who would identify and tell off this mean girl.

Any suggestions? Or should I just forget about it because this girl won’t be there picking on her forever, right?

Doomed?

November 9, 2009 / / 2 Comments

I feel like I’m doomed. Yes, doomed. Doomed to get sick. I feel like no matter what I do to protect myself and my family, there’s no hope and I’m going to get sick. At the very worst possible time, I’m sure. I’m remembering our cruise aboard the Disney Magic when so many people were getting sick from the Norwalk Virus. There were crew members cleaning the ship CONSTANTLY, and we still managed to all get sick. And here I am, armed with my Lysol wipes and my hand washing and my clorox and my vitamins just trying to keep healthy. But I feel like it’s kind of a losing battle, and I should just give up.

When I call the doctor’s office about my kids, they tell me, “Yes, it’s probably H1N1. Good luck.” When I ask about getting tamiflu, or about the possibility of getting vaccinated, they tell me that they are only vaccinating the very youngest kids, and after that only the high risk kids (those with asthma and other immune disorders), and that they are only giving tamiflu to a select demographic as well, and that unless you get it within the first 24 hours of getting sick, it doesn’t help much. Cole, my sickest family member, who was sick for a week, is now fever free and back at school. He’s survived! Megan is also doing well, and will probably go back to school today.

John, who seems absolutely fine in the day, has been crying at night. He just cries and says “OW!”. He’s not awake enough to tell me what’s wrong, and in the morning, when I ask him what hurts, he says nothing hurts and that he’s fine. I’ve kept him home from school and church for three days. When I called the doctor about him, they first said I should test him for strep, but then when they heard that two other members of the family had the swine flu, they said not to bother. He probably had swine flu, too. Well, after three days of this nighttime drama, I’m going to take him in to the doctor today.

Jenna, one of my “healthy kids” has developed a rash on her face, arms and hands. Yes, a rash. At first I thought it was that she had gotten something on her face (she said she ate spaghetti), but by Saturday it was a full blown rash, and so I took her to the doctor. They tested her for strep, just to see if that could be the cause, and I was hoping for strep. Please let it be strep, so that at least I can TREAT it. No strep. Viral. What do I do about it? Not much. No magic cream, no pill, nothing. While she’s most likely not contagious (rashes are usually contagious right BEFORE you break out, by the way), she looks so strange that I’m going to keep her home from school today. And by the way, if you are counting, we’re now into our second week of having someone stay home from school–Cole’s missed four days, Megan’s missed two, John’s missed two, and now Jenna. Natalie is my one hold out.

Oh, and Ryan’s still coughing up gunk.

Yesterday Natalie and I went to church. Where there are usually 7 of us, we had 2. Our neighbor asked me if I had killed off my family yet. Ha.

So, yes, I’m feeling trapped. I feel like no matter how hard I try, how well I clean, how many times I wash my hands or gargle with salt water, I’m doomed to get sick. And I’ll never send all of my kids to school again. Ever. When I was talking to the nurse, she said, “Well, the good thing is you can get all this over with and then everyone will be done with this flu, right?” Oh, right. There’s still a few of us who haven’t been sick and we might go through this whole thing again later. I asked her if, when I make it through this bout with sickness and don’t get it, if I am then immune, since I was exposed to the virus. “Oh, no,” she said, “unless you actually GET the virus, you don’t develop antibodies, so you aren’t immune.” What the what?

But I can’t get sick. I will keep myself healthy by the sheer strength of my will. I do NOT have time to be sick. This week is concert week, and I’ve put in many many hours of rehearsal (months of rehearsal) for this concert this week. I will NOT get sick. No matter what happens to this family of mine. And I will NOT get sick the next week, either. And I won’t get sick when we go on vacation. I will somehow get my hands on that vaccine and I will GET the shot. I will stay healthy. I will make a dress out of curtains if I have to, and I will never go hungry again! Sorry. I just went a little bit Scarlett O’Hara on you. How’s that for resolve?

And speaking of Gone with the Wind, here’s a classic just to make you smile today.

Paige’s Produce

November 7, 2009 / / 3 Comments

I know that we’re past the gardening season now, but we can still talk about it, right?

In the spring, Ryan and Cole built me some garden boxes. Ryan had been reading up on the square foot gardening, and made me two 4 x 4 boxes.

He filled it with the special mix of soil and compost and something else, and then I made a grid out of bamboo, and got started planting.

I had to weight down the grid with rocks so that the bamboo wouldn’t blow away. See those cute little tomato and pepper plants? Well, those ones froze that weekend, and I had to get new ones a few days later. What is it they say about planting before Mother’s day?

A month or so later, my little garden was really starting to sprout up.

I even asked Ryan to make one more box because I had more things I wanted to plant.

Mid summer the boxes looked more like this.

I realized that things need to be planted farther apart and to put all the squash and wandering plants on the outside.

In the summer, I decided I had to actually DO something with the food we were growing, so I canned tomato juice (which I thought I had a picture of, but I guess I don’t). I thought I was all bad because I canned 24 quarts of tomato juice FROM MY OWN TOMATOES, mind you, until I was talking to my father-in-law, and he said, “Let’s see, how many quarts of tomato juice have we canned this year? Oh, yes, 65 so far.” But then when I asked him how many plants he had, I think it was something like 30 plants. I only had 8. I guess they really like their tomato juice.

I also bottled peaches, and I did it all by myself!

I only got 13 quarts, but they were yummy, and we grew the peaches ourselves, and I was quite proud of them.

Then we were given some apples and pears, so I made pear jam, and then decided to make apple pear sauce with the rest of the pears.


While yummy, applesauce is not really the quickest thing. It takes hours and hours to do a dozen quarts! But I was proud of myself for being so Mormon that I can actually use my steam canner and preserve some of our own produce.

Just this week I got another box of apples, so I spent the day on Tuesday making applesauce AGAIN. This time the kids were home, but they were sick, so they were no help. I think it took me about 5 hours to get those 12 quarts done, but they ARE done.

So, as the growing season comes to a close, I’m thankful for the blessing of being able to grow a garden. I have a lot of ideas for how to do things NEXT year, and I can hardly wait until it’s spring and time to dig in the dirt again.

Walkin in a Winter Wonderland

December 23, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Hey, I’m still here. I’m just buried under about a foot of new snow. Because we didn’t quite have enough.

I’m so thankful I’m not traveling in this wet mess. There are people who have been stranded at the bus station for five days, but thanks to some kind people, they have found flights for many of them, and also fed and put them up in hotels, finally.

Our Arizona guests made it up here without any traveling trouble, and are enjoying the snow. I think the kids will be playing outside a lot of the day today. The problem is when they come back inside! They bring the snowsuits, boots, gloves, hats, and wet socks, and they have to put them somewhere.

Yes, it’s a winter wonderland!

Christmas parties

December 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I love a good company Christmas party! It’s a night out with good food that you don’t have to pay for, and there are usually gifts or prizes. And on top of that, there’s a good chance that you’ll get to watch someone else make a fool of themselves when they are drunk! What could be more festive than that? Since I don’t actually have a job, I’ve had to rely on Ryan’s job for my company party fix. For the past couple of years, though, I’ve had choir commitments on the same night as Ryan’s company Christmas parties, so we haven’t gone. I encouraged Ryan to go without me or to “take a date”, but he would have nothing of it, and if I couldn’t go with him, he didn’t want to go alone. If the situation were reversed, I would TOTALLY go without him.

This year was different, though. For some reason Ryan’s company planned their party for a Thursday night when I didn’t have choir stuff, and I was excited to go! But then, with the slow economy, the company had to let some people go, and decided that to host a company party would not be a wise idea. I have to agree that it’s a better idea to not have a party, than to spend a bunch of money on an open bar. But still, then we’re out of a company party! My friend Kristy describes the disappointment perfectly in her post called “The Economy – Stealing More Than My 401K.”

As it turns out, I DID have a choir commitment the night of the party, after all. We had to rehearse for the Music and the Spoken word for this last Sunday. And if you didn’t catch the MSW this week (shame on you! You should have been watching!) you can find it, or last week’s wonderful program, and look for my bright smiling face at the BYU TV site. Yesterday’s program will be on next Sunday at 8:00am or 4:00pm, I think. I was kind of relieved that I didn’t have to try to make it to both a rehearsal and a party that night.

But never fear, we still got to go to the Choir Christmas party. It’s quite a lovely affair at the Grand America. I think they set up for about 1000 people, and the food was great this year, and the company was so much fun.

When I was signing up and registering my guest, I decided to mix things up a little bit. Instead of “Ryan”, I registered that “Dirk” would be my date. Just for fun. A day or so before the party, I did mention to Ryan that he “may or may not have to go by a different name at the choir Christmas party.” He was open minded about the whole thing, and when we got there to pick up our name tags, there was his–Dirk Erickson. “Dirk?” he said to me? “I’m Dirk?!”
“Well, yes, I guess you are,” I replied, “Isn’t that fun?”
“Whatever.” Thankfully we were in party mode, and he didn’t get too annoyed with me.

So, when we sat down to eat and laugh and joke with the people at our table, we wondered if the others at our table would notice my husband’s name change. Maybe they don’t know his real name? About 15-20 minutes into the dinner, Ryan commented to me that maybe no one notices name tags, anyway, because there had been no comments on his new name. But never fear, my friend Maranda was the one to notice.

“What the heck?” she said when she looked at his name tag, “Dirk? Who’s Dirk?”
That got everyone looking and asking why his name tag said Dirk. “Oh, because Paige is just weird,” was the best answer we could come up with. And we all got a good laugh out of it. Maybe next year we’ll Both have different names. We could be Rhett and Scarlett or something like that. Or Bonnie and Clyde, or Lea and Luke, or…. but one of us probably has to be a choir member. Darn. But it was a fun little way to see if people actually notice what your name tag says.
It was a lovely night, with good friends, good food, and the dessert was good this year! And it’s always nice to have President Monson attend the party!

So we still had our “company party”. On Saturday we had two family parties. One with Ryan’s family in the day. There was tons of yummy food, a talent show and some gift opening. It was very fun, of course. Then my family had their party at night. There was lots of yummy food, a craft, a giant twister game, a puppet show, and Santa came. It was probably the quietest family party we’ve had in a long time, since several families didn’t come. It was a wonderful mix of visiting with family, fun for the kids, and presents from Grandma.

This week we have our neighborhood party, which is a WHOLE different atmosphere. I’ve had to miss this one for the past couple of years, too, but this year I am lucky that they scheduled it later, and I can go. Ryan has no problem going to that one without me, by the way. I’m working on our white elephant gift, because that is the highlight of the party! Nothing too personal and embarrassing, like some people do, but I do want something original and fun. One year I gave away tickets to a U of U game that was in SanDiego. I don’t think they got used, but it’s a fun idea. Another year I gave away tickets to some show that was playing in Wendover the next night. I don’t have any quirky tickets to give away this year, but I do have a nice Manheim Steamroller gift basket with Halloween music and light up teeth in it. I think that might be my gift of choice this year. That or some just for men hair color. Maybe both.

What’s been your most exciting white elephant gift? My brother-in-law once took a tarantula to one of these things.

Today brings making and delivering the neighbor’s gifts. Last night we baked up three different kind of treats, and today we need to finish up the packaging and send the kids out to deliver them all (hopefully before the storm comes in). And my brother and his family are coming to stay with us for a couple of days. I hope they don’t mind that the house is a mess. With all the party attending, bell ringing, and baking, I haven’t gotten around to much house cleaning. Oh well, it will just get messed up when they are here, right? So we are just starting out with the house pre-messed!

If I don’t get a chance to wish you all a Merry Christmas, please know that I do wish you all the most wonderful Christmas week. Let’s all try to enjoy our families and the fun and excitement that is Christmas, and not worry so much about the details that we all think need to be perfect. There’s only a few more days to drink in the wonderful feeling of Christmas, so let’s all enjoy it!

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