Month: January 2007 (Page 2 of 4)

What a great weekend we had. Ryan’s nephew, Ben, is going on a mission to Dominican Republic, so on Saturday we went with him and the family to the temple. Afterward we went to dinner and ate way too much. Sunday was a beautiful, snow-covered day. It finally pushed some of the smog out of the air and it was crisp and cold. One of our neighbors had plowed the sidewalks for the whole circle, but I asked Cole to go out and shovel the front walk. That boy’s got to get used to being cold, after all, right? While he was outside laboring to clear the walk, our new next-door neighbor came over with his four wheeler/plow combo and cleared our driveway. How nice!

We went to church in Orem to hear Ben’s farewell talk. He did a great job, as did the rest of the speakers, and it was fun for the kids to sit with their cousins. Afterward, we went over to Ryan’s brother’s house for a family dinner. Shortly before we were to start eating, Jenna’s 16 year old cousin Camille brought a crying Jenna in to us, and apologized greatly for their accident on the stairs. It seems that Camille was going up the stairs and slipped. Jenna was also on the stairs, but a few stairs down, so when Camille slipped, she took out Jenna below her. Poor girls. Jenna was crying a ton, and when she calmed down a bit, I asked if she wanted to sit on my lap instead of Ryan’s. She did, so she got up to come over to me. Her leg buckled under her and she cried some more. Ryan got her to calm down by having her lay down with her leg up a little bit. We asked if she wanted to go home, and she said no. She wanted to eat some dinner. We moved her to the table, but she didn’t really eat anything. She lay back on the couch and was very calm again (people asked if she was asleep, but she was just really trying to relax). After she ate a few bites of cake later, she was ready to come home, so we gathered everyone up, and Ryan carried her to the car.

When we got home, we called our wonderful neighbor, JB, and asked if he would come and look at her (he’s a doctor, not just some nice neighbor). He came over and looked at her ankle, prodded and asked her questions, and told us he was pretty sure it wasn’t broken. It looked like a bad sprain, but he would still recommend that we take her in for x-rays in the morning just to be sure. So, we took her up to bed, propped her up, gave her some Advil and a drink of water and she went to bed. She didn’t sleep too well and was awake a couple of times in the night, but she did sleep, at least. This morning, the ankle was a bit swollen, not bruised much or anything, but she was crying like a banshee if I tried to get her to move it at all.

Ryan decided he’d better work from home today so he could take her in to the doctor’s this morning, as I wasn’t sure how I’d manage carrying Jenna and keeping John happy at the doctor’s office. Since JB had already seen her last night, Ryan took her there to his office, where he had said they could squeeze her in and take some quick x-rays. Turns out her tibia IS broken, right above the ankle. (Click for a bigger view of that x-ray) It’s a clean break, with no displaced bones, so they won’t need to move anything around to set it (hopefully). They put her leg in a fiberglass splint, which she will have to wear for a week, and then next Monday we can take her back for a cast. No walking for her for at least a week.
So, we’ll be hanging out here. Her birthday party that I was planning will be put on hold, as will any outings we might have been thinking about. She’s been very brave so far, and only cries when you have to move her, but I’m sure this will get old soon. So, wish us luck, and let me know of any really cool educational game sites we can try when she gets tired of watching the Disney channel all day.

When the girls found out that I had TWO yoga mats, that prompted a little yoga class.

    

This is called Cobra,                   and here’s downward facing dog.

They enjoyed their little workout and have asked if we can do it again.  When we were done, Natalie said, “That was harder than I thought it was going to be.”  I feel the same way when I go to class.  I think that’s the point.

Just thought I’d share with you what John does when he gets ahold of the camera.  He takes pictures of his favorite things–cars and trucks.  He took all these before I realized he was getting into photography.

Life should be a musical. Really! It would be so much more fun if we were all singing and dancing around all day. I try it with my kids sometimes and they just think I’m crazy. That’s why I enjoyed last night’s SCRUBS so gosh darn much. It’s Scrubs, the musical! Of course, the reason it’s a musical is because a lady hears everything said as singing and they all think she’s crazy (just like my kids! Maybe I AM crazy!) until they find an aneurysm, kind of a downer. Anyway, LOVED the musical scrubs, and I must say that Grey’s Anatomy from last night may be the best one yet. If you didn’t see it you can always click here and watch it really small on your computer, or you could just go to ABC.com and download it.

I hosted Book Club here last night, and it went really well.  I got my house cleaned in time (always a worry of mine), I made a variation on this dessert, and it turned out well, we talked about this book, and it was fun to see friends and chat.  We always go around the circle and tell what’s new or what’s been going on in the last month or so, and I realized that I had nothing really interesting to say.  Everything interesting or funny that goes on around here, I post on my blog.  So when we get together in person I have nothing to share.  That could be a problem.  This blog is sucking all the interesting out of my life!

So, since I have nothing to add, I’ll share with you a bit from my sister’s life.  Yes, my sister Chrissy (who thankfully doesn’t read this blog) has 8 young kids and is always good for a story.  Her hubby, Tom, really should have a blog, because it would be funny.  Funny in the we-have-a-ton-of-little-kids-and-they-make-us-laugh way.  So, I’ll share an excerpt from their oh so funny (and very long) Christmas letter.

Anna (1st grade) asked Chrissy, “What happened to daddy’s grandma’s wife?” (meaning her great-grandpa). “He went to live with Jesus,” Chrissy responded, reminding Anna that she had attended the funeral and the graveside service.  “Is that the place where I got to chase birds all over?” she asked, looking up in the air as though thinking back fondly.  “Yes,” said Chrissy, somewhat surprised she had remembered the event.  “Oh,” sighed Anna happily, “I love it when people die!”

Someone could get the wrong idea from a phrase like that.  It was even worse when Daniel slipped on his words in front of a foyer full of old people at a retirement home we visit monthly.  After two years of visits, sweet Myrtle had passed away, and within a matter of only a couple of months, our new friend, Betty, had now also died.  Daniel said to me, in a voice plenty loud enough for all of the elderly people to hear, even without turning up their hearing aids, “Did we kill her, too, Dad?”

Another story involves new and creative words.

We’ve had a few church mishaps.  On one occasion, when exiting the chapel, Andrew (kindergarten) said, “Ouch, my jiggle-jogglers.  Ohhh, my jiggle-jogglers.  Ahhh, my JIGGLE-JOGGLERS.”  He had been lightly bumped by one of his siblings, which may hve cause slight discomfort, but that wasn’t the real issue; he was clearly very please with his new word and felt driven to say it over and over, getting louder each time.  I did my best to shush him, sensing many eyes tracking the steps of our slow moving herd.  “Oh, don’t worry, dad,” he said confidently, all the while beaming with a sense of his own cleverness, “they don’t know what jiggle-jogglers means!”

So, thank you Tom and Chrissy for our laugh of the day, and I hope you all have a wonderful Friday!  I am actually excited to watch my tivo-ed shows from last night, since Thursday seems to be the only night with anything new I want to watch on.

There are some wonderful things going on in the world. We hear so much negative on the news, I’d like to share some amazing stories and let you feel the love. A few days ago, I read about Kelli, a woman who needs a kidney transplant and who was losing her insurance. On Boomama’s blog, she decided to not just ask for prayers for Kelli, but started a fund. Now, I’m not saying that I support every old fund raiser for sob stories out there, but I was touched by this, and wanted to learn more. And in one day, people donated over $8,000 to help her with her payments. That doesn’t take away her health problems, and it doesn’t take care of all of her family’s financial troubles, but it sure helps out, and it sends a message that people out there care about her. Even people who don’t know her and never will.

And I have to tell you about my friend Robin. ( I hope this is ok, Robin!) Robin’s been a single mother for quite some time now, and she’s dealt with a lot of obstacles. She’s come a long way from that hyper, impulsive, instead of going to class I think I’ll go skydiving friend we knew and loved in college. She’s strong and independent, raising her kids to be good people. She tells me the worst part of being divorced isn’t being a single mother, it’s dealing with her ex-husband. He is constantly questioning her judgement, and seems to think it’s his right to take her to court every two years or so and fight her for custody of the kids and argue about his child support. Worse than the financial struggles this brings, is the mental anguish she goes through every time he drags her into court, badmouthing her mothering style and all that she’s trying to do.

She’s been in the process of remodeling her kitchen for quite some time. She ripped up the flooring, starting taking off the wainscoating on the walls, and did a lot of demolition. I believe she bought some tile and carpet, but then sold it because she needed cash to pay some bills. She’s had a plain concrete floor in the kitchen for quite some time, which cannot be fun to stand on.
So, right before Christmas, Robin took her kids on a trip, and one of her church leaders and friends asked her if it would be ok if they did a little work on her kitchen while they were gone. In six days they TOTALLY redid her kitchen. They painted the cabinets, put down new granite countertops, put wood floor in the kitchen and family room, stripped and painted the walls, put in a new sink and dishwasher (I think) and made everything pretty. All while she was gone. Unbelievable.

The pictures got a little distorted from my messing with them, but you get the idea, right?

So, friends, there is great kindness in the world, and it’s going on right around us. Join in. Do something amazing for someone else. Or if you can’t do something big, do something small to make someone else’s life better.

This morning, after trying to ignore John for about an hour (it was 7:00), he came back into the bed and was humming and beeping and making all kinds of noises.  I turned over to see what he was up to, and he had a calculator and was pretend playing on “his gameboy”.

“I’m the blue guy, Mom,” he said.

“Can I be the red guy?”  I asked.

“No.  There’s only one guy,” he said.  Then he made crashing noises (spitting in my face as he did it) and said, “there goes that rock.”

This went on for several minutes, with me throwing out suggestions, like, “watch out for that rabbit,”  CRASH!, or “there’s a car,”  CRASH.  It was quite immaginative, and very fun to see him pretending like that.

Then I won’t have to feel bad that I’m too cheap to buy him a game boy. He can just play the calculator!

I forgot to welcome my friend Kristy to my little list of blogging friends over to the side there. Kristy and I worked together at my job of jobs…Coverstar, back when Ryan and I were first married and I couldn’t find a real job. I started as a receptionist and worked my way up to purchasing agent. Yep, I ordered, bolts, screws, powder coated anodized steel, sheet metal, gears, plastics, butt splices (one of my favorites), and other various things I knew NOTHING about. Kristy kept me sane, or she tried to. Obviously we both failed, and we are now both crazy. But I welcome Kristy to the blogosphere, and I invite you to go and read her site. She’s far more entertaining than I am.

Yesterday when I said I was going to go and clean a closet, well, I DID it. It took me over an hour and my garbage can is now full, but it’s done. Nice closet. Now about the rest of the house….hmmm.

I realized at yoga when I looked down at my shoes that I had taken off, that I was not wearing matching shoes. I have two pairs of the same Cherokee shoes, one blue and one black. I had on one of each. Oh, so I wore non matching shoes to yoga, that’s no big deal, until I realized that I wore those shoes all day yesterday. THOSE shoes. That pair of non matching shoes. All day. Oh the shame. My friend DeEtte said I must have too many shoes. Yes, I’ll admit that I have a lot of shoes, but I don’t think that’s the problem. I think the problem is that I’m an airhead.

It’s COLD out there this morning.

It’s COLD out there EVERY morning.

I’d like to be a good neighbor and go socialize with my new next door neighbors, but it’s too darn cold out there, and last time I walked over to chat they weren’t home. I’m not doing that again! I feel like I have to dress like a polar bear to go outside. Brrrrrrr!

But anyway, I’m participating in a little organization challenge, called Smart Habit Saturday, and you are supposed to chose one goal to work on for the week. I’ve chosen an organizational goal for this week, and that is to clean out one drawer every day. On Saturday I started by cleaning out one of the “junk drawers” in the kitchen. Yes, sadly, we have more than one. The one I tackled was where we had been putting owners manuals for appliances, etc. I thought I had put a gift certificate I got for my birthday in there, and I was actually looking for that. Didn’t find the gift certificate (darn), but I did find a host of other crap that got thrown away. I also took all the manuals and put them in a file, and now they are happily filed away, instead of sloshing all over in the drawer.

Today the kids are out of school, and it looks like we’ve had a closet explosion in the girls’ room. So, I’m going to work on that one. It’s not a drawer, but I’ll count it anyway. Hopefully I won’t get lost myself in there, and I’ll be able to accomplish it without going into anaphalactic (yes, I know it’s spelled wrong, but I really have NO idea how to spell it, so I’m just guessing) shock from being in their extremely messy room for more than a few minutes.

Oh, and can you tell me what movie our post title comes from today?