Month: November 2006 (Page 3 of 3)

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.