The Trials of a Busy Mom

Month: May 2008 (Page 1 of 2)

Ow

Today, while leaning into the van to get some groceries, I banged the top of my head on the top of the van doorframe. I just didn’t duck enough. The pain shot through my head and neck, as I guess my neck didn’t like it when the body that was moving in a forward motion was suddenly stopped by a head that wasn’t moving in a forward motion anymore. It hurt so bad that I put my head down on the seat and held it while saying, “Ow, Ow, Ow!”. I did not swear, as Jenna was in the car. But I guess I wasn’t hurt enough for her to worry about me, because she just continued into the house. By the time I made it into the house, I was crying, it hurt so bad. And I was mad. Mad at myself that I would get hurt doing something so routine. And embarrassed, because I must be really really stupid to get hurt banging my head on the van, for Pete’s sake.

Award-Winning Kids

Megan got an award.

Or two.
Actually the really exciting one was the “Hope of America” award that the Kiwanis Club gives out. I’m really proud of her. She also got a science award and a presidential academic award.

I would tell more about it, but I’m exhausted from attending the 6th grade graduation with a squirmy John in tow, (no parking and no seats, so we stood in the back for the whole hour), the drama this morning about if she does or does not have to wear a skirt, watching Natalie’s field day, then thinking I had lost my camera, running back to the school in a panic, finding the camera in the bag, and making John lunch (I should not have let him help stir the macaroni and cheese, because now it’s all over the stove), and I get to go to Jenna’s first grade talent show in about an hour.

I’m sure you’re going through similar “end of the school year” chaos at your house, too, so I’ll understand if you don’t have the energy to comment.

Tracy Aviary Field Trip

peacock
Hi, this is Natalie speaking, and on the something of May, Me and my mom went to the Tracy Aviary. We saw some very pretty birds, such as the peacock, toucan, parrot, parakeet, pelican, and lots more. We took like a thousand pictures! One of the most exciting things is that all the people in our group had a peacock walk like, two feet away from us! The aviary also has a bird show, but it wasn’t open when we were around that part.(The aviary is huge, trust me.) Anyway, in case you didn’t know, we were there for a third-grade field trip. After we were finished at the aviary, we played in the park and took a few pictures there too! Then we had lunch with all the other classes and then took the long, long, bus ride back to the elementary school.

(I think Natalie did a find job with her guest post. Maybe I’ll let the other kids have a turn sometime, too.)

Tagged by Melissa

It’s all true Oh, I was tagged by Melissa to do this thing, and having nothing better to do on a Monday Memorial Day morning (since it’s raining and I can’t go outside and plant the flowers I was planning to plant), here I go.

Favorite person (outside family)? Well, that depends on the day, now doesn’t it? I have a fabulous group of friends who have been my friends for 30 years, and I’d have to say that they are my favorite people.

Favorite food? Oh, there are so many. I love cookies and cheesecake. But on the not so sweet side, I enjoy a good steak and baked potato. I also like a good salad with lots of good stuff in it.

Quirks about you? Quirks? I don’t have any quirks! I like to sing to my kids and make up silly songs about them, but everyone does that, right? I tend to buy clothes and then not wear them right away. I have to wait for the right occasion to break them in.

How would the person who loves you most describe you in ten words or less? “Practically perfect in every way”. Really. You can even ask him.

Any regrets in life? There were a few times in my youth that I did things that really hurt other people’s feelings. I wish I hadn’t done those things, and I still remember and feel bad for them. I regret yelling at my kids so much, and I wish I hadn’t let myself get so out of shape, but I’m working on those things.

Favorite Charity/ Cause? The LDS Church’s Perpetual Education Fund and Humanitarian Aid, and the Make a Wish Foundation.

Favorite Blog recently? Well, I just discovered Derfwad Manor, and I must say Mrs. G. cracks me up.

Something you can’t get enough of? Chocolate. And “I love you, Mom”s from my kids.

Worst job you’ve ever had? Let’s see. Could it be the cabinet shop where I worked immediately after I came home from my mission where all the people could swear with the very best of swearers? Or the pool cover manufacturing plant where I actually got frostbite on my toes and had to talk to angry customers on the phone every day and then got promoted to purchasing agent and had to order things that I had no knowledge of such as “butt splices”? Or a substitute teacher for terribly unorganized teachers where I couldn’t even find the lesson plans? It’s a toss up.

What job would you pay NOT to have
? Oh, sausage grinder comes to mind. Or the guy who cleans the elephant cages at the zoo.

If you could be a fly on the wall, where
? On the set of a tv show. Maybe on the ‘Lost’ island watching them film.

Favorite Bible verse right now? Joshua 24:15 “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”

Guilty Pleasure? Watching Desperate Housewives.

Got any confessions? My house is usually a mess, and my bedroom and closet are not clean, either.

If you HAD to spend $1,000 on YOURSELF, how would you spend it? I would do some laser hair removal, so I wouldn’t have to shave my legs or tweeze my eyebrows ever again.

Favorite thing about your house? Oh, I love my yellow breakfast nook, I love my cute curtains and my red leather couch, I love the porch, I love the big backyard, I love the neighborhood, and I love the neighbors.

Least favorite thing about your house?
The center island in the kitchen is too big, and that makes it so there’s not enough room to open the dishwasher and unload without stepping over and around the dishwasher.

One thing you are bad at? Dieting and exercising.

One thing you’re good at? Being nice to people.

If you could change something about your circumstances, what? I would be skinny.

Who would you like to meet someday? Ellen DeGenerous, George Clooney, Thomas S. Monson.

What makes you feel sexy? My husband thinks I’m beautiful.

Who is your real life hero? Oh, I have many heros. My friend Melinda, for one. She’s always there for you if you need help, and she is the best organizer I have ever known. My freind DaNae has lost 100 pounds, and now she’s running 10K’s started a home business and it seems like she can do anything. My Mom. She raised four kids on very little money, and she hardly ever yelled at us. Now those four kids are all responsible members of society, married to good people. My sister, who has nine kids under the age of 12. She doesn’t get away much, but she doesn’t mind. Her kids are happy and get along with each other. I could go on and on and on about heros in my life.

What is the hardest part of your job
? Potty training a very stubborn and funny little boy.

When are you most relaxed? At home, after the kids have gone to bed, watching tv in my room.

What stresses you out? Overscheduling. Auditioning, and performing.

What can you not live without? The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why do you blog? I like to imagine my blog is my own little talk show. I can talk about things that are on my mind, and really, it’s just fun. My little guy even said to me the other day, “Mom, I read your blob. It’s funny.” When he starts reading my “blob”, I’m in trouble.

Now, the hardest part – tagging others!

Melissa is the one who tagged me on this one, and while I’d love to list a whole bunch of people to do this, I won’t. If you’d like to play along, please feel free to do so, and be sure and let me know if you do, so I can come over and read your answers.

Lessons from the Bible

My little guy wanted to sit on my lap because he said his leg hurt. “Oh, I’m sorry your leg hurts,” I said.
We sat there for a minute while the girls got ready for school, and then he said, “Sitting on your lap made my leg not hurting anymore.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I said, relieved to have finally done something right in his eyes. He’s very critical and seems to always think he’s right and I’m wrong. “I used my ‘mommy powers’ to make you feel better.”
“Mom,” he said, “you don’t have powers. Jesus has powers.”
Well, I can’t argue with that one, because Jesus does indeed have powers.
“When the waves and wind are wild, then Jesus can say ‘peace be still’ and it will stop,” he said. I was impressed. Maybe they talked about this in Primary recently, because, I’m embarrassed to admit, I don’t think we have talked about this story at home recently.
“That’s right. Jesus calmed the wind and the waves,” I said. Not wanting to let this ‘mommy power’ thing go, I added, “I wonder if you are wild and crazy if I can say ‘peace be still’ and then YOU will calm down?”
“No,” he said, “only Jesus can do it.”

When rain is good

Rain is good.
It waters our lawns and flowers, and we need water to drink.
It is also good when it rains out 3 overlapping softball games and picture days for my three girls. Because even though we had figured out through very intricate planning how in the world all three girls were going to get to their games (and take Cole to a band meeting while I go to a rehearsal), it’s much nicer when you just don’t have to worry about it.
Thanks, Rain!

That made my whole night

I’ve maybe mentioned here before that I’m a big fan of Donny Osmond, right? Right. Did I mention that I met him? Yeah, we’re good friends, now. I also met Marie and Merrill once. Honestly! I’m not joking.

Well, when I saw on LDS.org that the Osmonds were the guests for a Pioneer Day concert, I just KNEW I had to have tickets to that one. I even mentioned to our bell choir director that he should volunteer our services so that maybe we could play in the concert, thus furthering our chances to see and meet the Osmonds. I haven’t heard anything about us playing in the concert, but last night at rehearsal we were given a gift. Tickets for each of us to see the concert! My friend Maranda was almost as excited as I was when she heard that they were giving us each tickets, because she knows how much I wanted to go. I did a tiny little happy dance right there at rehearsal.

So, if you, too, are a fan of the Osmonds and really really really want to go to the concert with me, you may begin sucking up now.

A List! It’s a list. Because I have no clever title.

**I’m drowning in end of the year projects, programs and special events. I mean, I made a poodle skirt yesterday, folks.

**I got a new phone and I don’t really know how to use it. I mean I know how to use it, but how do I get the other half of my phone book that was saved ‘on the phone’ not ‘on the sim card’ to the new phone? I have to enter each and every one of those numbers in by hand?

**It was so dang windy here last night! I couldn’t sleep, and the wind was howling, and then I heard our garbage can blow down the driveway out to the middle of the circle. I finally got some earplugs, but then I still couldn’t sleep because I had the dang “Seuss” songs I had learned at rehearsal last night going through my head OVER and OVER and OVER.

**Why is it that if I need to print something simple, like a recipe or an email or an address, my printer jams, or there’s an ink problem or for some reason it just WON’T WORK! Which causes me endless amounts of frustration. Yet, my kids can sit down and print FIVE color awards from whatever game they are playing, using up every last drop of ink that was left in the printer? Answer me that.

**Pre-school is over for John. And every day he asks me where he’s going, and who’s coming over. Give me strength.

**Our Tivo thing crashed and we only recorded 17 minutes of the David vs. David American Idol thing. Oh well.

**Hooray for Kristy Yamaguchi! I knew she would win!

**Yesterday, when I got in the van to go somewhere, there was no dash activity. I was driving, but all the dials were not registering. So, it looked like my tank was empty, and I was going 0 mph. Kind of freaky. Well, I promptly brought the van back to the garage, and took the Suburban. Well, last night, by handy husband took the whole dash apart, and soldered whatever connectors were freaking out, and it’s fixed! All better, with a zero dollar repair bill! That makes me very happy.

**And lastly, I’m trying to motivate myself to go down and pound out my treadmill time. Instead I’m blogging. What’s wrong with this picture?

What ever happened with that audition you said was so awful?

I’ve had some people question what happened with that bad audition, so I’m here to fill you in. It must not have been quite as bad as I thought it was, or maybe there weren’t that many adults that tried out or something. But whatever the reason, they called me back last week, and I had to go in on Thursday night. When I went there, I found out I was one of three women they were considering for the part of the Mayor’s wife. We had to learn a couple of songs from the show, sing them and read some lines, and that was about it. I was done in less than an hour, and I had my self-esteem intact!

I had to wait until Friday night to see the cast list, which was posted on their web site, and sure enough, there was my name. I am “Mrs. Mayor”, or the Mayor of Whoville’s wife.

I’ve got mixed emotions. I’m excited to be in a play again. I haven’t been in a play for quite a few years, and while it’s lots and lots of fun, it’s also a huge time commitment. How will I manage it? How will I juggle all the commitments I already have on my calendar? Well, I guess we’ll find out.

We had our first official rehearsal on Saturday morning. In fact, the cast meeting started at 9 am. I was just finishing up the race at 9 am, but I quickly drank some water and drove to the rehearsal, still in my race clothes and everything. I wish I would have gone home to shower, because the whole time I was at this read-through, I was just embarrassed that I smelled so bad. Luckily, there was another lady there who had also run the race, and she hadn’t showered or changed her clothes, either, so I didn’t feel quite as yucky as if I were the only sweaty person there.

As we read and sang through the whole script, I was impressed with the quality of the actors in this play. Just sight reading it through, these people had character, spunk, and great voices. I’m sure that the show will really turn out great. As for my part, it’s decent. It’s not a huge lead like Horton the Elephant or the Cat in the Hat. But I do get to sing a tiny bit and don’t have that many lines to memorize, but whenever the Whos are on stage, I’m pretty sure the Mayor and his wife will be there, so I’ll have some fun stage time.

I will let you know as this thing progresses how it is to be in a cast with mostly younger people (there are about 4 other people around my age, and the rest of the cast is probably 25 or younger), and how we manage with all these kids (there are a lot of little kids in the show), as well as how in the world I will do “Who Hair”. That is, if I have time to blog, I’ll tell you these things, because frankly, I don’t know when that will be.

So, stay tuned, and hang on, it will be a wild ride (for me, at least). Thankfully all the girls have friends on their softball teams, so I can pawn them off on my friends and neighbors instead of actually attending their games.

And keep July 11-21 open, because you’re going to want to come and see this show with your families.

5K? No way!

I need about a week to recover from Saturday. I was so tired last night I didn’t even have the energy or will to blog!

Saturday I got up at about 6:00 to get ready for the Running with Angels Race. I met my friends at 7 and picked up our “group shirts”. DaNae had put the “Highland Road Runners” on some blue shirts from her husband’s company, so not only were we doing a little advertising for him, we all matched and looked cute. Well, not really cute. I mean how cute can you actually look when you are running? Not very. To avoid any hair in the face, I had my hair in pig tails and bobby pinned to the max. Because I hate it when I’m all sweaty and hair gets in my face, don’t you?

race

So, we drove down to Thanksgiving point and got our stuff. It was a beautiful day. We even got those little electronic shoe chips to tell your time. I kind of felt like prisoner on house arrest. If you step outside the marked path, this thing will zap you and send out enough wattage to curl your hair–forever. OK, not really, but that’s what I was thinking. I was surprised at how many people I knew at the race. And I was a little embarrassed. I mean, I’m not the kind of person you would expect to see at one of these things, and besides, we already discussed how great I looked. As we made our way over to the starting line and waited, I just kept thinking, ‘What in the world am I doing here with all these runners? Why am I even here? Whose idea was this?’ and of course I thought, ‘Now should I go to the bathroom before we start, or can I make it for a whole hour?’ One look at the line for the bathroom convinced me that no, I don’t need to go.

Then, all of a sudden, we were off. I was carried in a sea of runners–well, I wish I had been carried, that would have been more fun–I was running with some runners! I was actually running. I don’t know how far it was that I jogged before I started walking, but soon I was walking, having all kinds of people passing me. I should have just started at the back. I would walk for a while, then jog for a bit, then walk for a while… You get the picture. I really should get a digital watch so I can keep regular about the whole walking/jogging thing, but I just kind of jogged when I felt like I could, and walked the rest of the time. Several times I saw my friends running the other way, and I would wave. That must have made them feel good–“Oh, look how far ahead of Paige I am, Hooray!”

We started at the Children’s Garden at Thanksgiving Point, and then went through the gardens. Since it’s been so cold this spring, the tulips that would normally be spent were at their full blooming glory. It was a beautiful sight. Too bad I couldn’t really appreciate it because I was huffing and puffing along. I soon found my pace and found a few target people to try and stay close to. Id’ like to thank that one girl with the long brown ponytail wearing black shorts and a race t-shirt. I stayed as close to her as I could. Sometimes I was ahead of her, sometimes she was ahead of me. We really should have paired up and done the race together, because I was probably annoying her, always trying to pass when she was walking. There was also a little girl in a pink shirt who made me laugh. She was maybe 7 or 8, and cute as can be. I don’t know where her parents or group were, because it seemed like she was alone. When I came up and passed her, she looked at me, and I smiled at her. Then she picked up her speed and ran to pass me. Then I would slowly come up on her and pass her again, but she would run to pass me. She was probably thinking, “There is no WAY I’m letting that old fat lady beat me on this race!” I don’t remember if I beat her, or if she beat me.

I finally came to the finish, and my time was 45 minutes and 38 seconds. That’s faster than I normally go on the treadmill, so that’s a personal best time for me.

When I looked up my results, I can see that I came in #33 in my age group, (only 12 forty year old women behind my friend Lisa) and 529th out of 754. That means that 225 people were behind me. That makes me feel better. I can also look up my friend’s scores and see that….Wow, they rocked! This categorization system leaves out a little information. Maybe they should rank you by your age, weight, and fitness level. Then I could know, that in the category of out of shape, overweight 40 year old women, I came in..eleventh, or something like that. Or, Look at this, Walter, there were only 5 people older and fatter than me who came in before me! Right.

When the torture was finally over, I grabbed a water bottle and chugged that thing down. I also ate an orange slice or two and those were some REALLY sweet oranges. Hardly worth three miles, but still, yummy. Even though I did not enjoy the race, there is a certain sense of accomplishment in having finished. I am proud of myself, and I’m glad I did it. Do I want to do it again real soon? Oh, hell no.

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