It’s not often I type the words “smooth endoplasmic reticulum” and “golgi bodies”. That’s why it’s so great to have kids. We can re-learn all that stuff we talked about in biology so many many years ago.
Month: February 2009 (Page 2 of 2)
Ryan keeps giving me updates on how long we’ll have to wait. I guess we’re down to 5 days now.
It’s just a little something we like to call our Sunday night date. You know, some nice together time as we watch the amazing adventures of the race. How about you? What do you and your sweetie watch together?
John just said to me, “If you don’t know how to say ‘Mom’, then you don’t know how to love.” Wow! How sweet it that?
Thanks to facebook, I’ve gotten in touch with one of my mission companions this week.
I had kept in contact with her for a while through Christmas cards, and then,like most people, she dropped off the radar. But through the magic of the internet, she’s found me. And what do you know, she’s living in Germany?! After we emailed, she called me, and it was so much fun talking to her. That brought back such great memories of the fun times we had in Germany. So, then I had to go and look up the pictures.
This is where we lived in the great city of Duisburg.
Nice area, right? That’s what we thought. We were in a Turkish neighborhood, which was interesting. But we were always able to find a good Döner kebab, and got invited in for tea with the neighbors a few times.
We worked hard trying to find and teach people the gospel, but we also had a lot of fun.
This is a picture from one day when the Elders must have been out of money before they ran out of month. They called us in despiration, “Sisters, we’re starving and we don’t have any money.” I’m guessing they had used their money buying kebabs. We were kind and made them lunch. It looks like it was pancakes. And why are we eating off an ironing board, you might ask? Well, we didn’t want to out and out break the rules, and the rule was the Elders were not allowed in our apartments. So we had to come up with a creative solution. I think this was in the hallway or back landing or porch or something like that.
Gosh, don’t we look young? That’s because we were young. I was about 23 at the time. As much as I don’t like to admit it, that was a long time ago.
We were allowed one day a week to do our personal stuff, like laundry, letter writing, grocery shopping and the occasional outing. It seems like most of my pictures are from that personal day, since that’s when we were allowed to let loose and have some fun.
And after I became “friends” with my old friend Tammy, face book recommended a couple of other people that I might just want to be friends with, and I found a couple of Elders from the mission, too.
So here I sit at the computer. In my pajamas. Not going to church today because Megan and I are still getting over our bout with the flu. And I’m looking over my mission pictures and laughing.
Memories…like the corner of our minds….
The other day I went to a soccer game with my soccer playin’ daughter, Megan. Indoor, soccer, in case you were wondering what kind of insane team plays in the frigid weather and the snow. We were joking before the game that she was a Jedi knight, and the other soccer players would come to her and say, “Help me Obi Wan Megan. You’re my only hope.” She hit my arm and said, Maaa- ommmm. Typical response.
But during the game, I looked up from my book (yes, I do read at my children’s sporting events. Doesn’t everyone?) and saw that they had put Megan in as goalie. My little, not quite 5 ft tall, 80 pound 12 year old was playing goalie. Why is she playing goalie? That’s not her position. Eek. Needless to say, I put the book away.
Every time the other team got near their goal, my stomach tied itself into knots. Argh! No! No! Get back in the goal! Nooooooo! My little Obi Wan Megan WAS their only hope, and it wasn’t going well. Not only were they outsized and outplayed by this older, better team, but now they have my tiny little daughter as goalie. I felt like standing up and screaming, “Use the force! Use the force Obi wan Megan!” but I didn’t. I let her play out her stint as goalie with dignity.
About 1/2 way through the period, the coach switched her out and let someone else take a turn at the carnage, and I could breathe again. I much prefer watching her dashing across the field kicking the ball instead of trying to use her body to stop the ball. When the game was over, I braced myself for the disappointment and sullenness that might follow a loss such as this one. After the game, I met up with my little jedi and said, “Good game. How was that, playing goalie?”
“It was kind of fun. But I’m not really tall enough to be a good goalie,” and that was it. No sulking, no anger at the loss. Just joy to be able to play soccer.
Now if only I could make piano a sport.
Because of Ryan and his unfortunate illness this week, we decided to postpone Jenna’s baptism. She was a little disappointed, but was very good about it.
And not having the baptism on Saturday actually made our weekend much more simple. The girls got to go to their basketball and soccer games, which they were willing to miss, but were happy when they actually got to attend. Especially since it was picture day. But we still wanted Jenna to feel like her birthday was special. On Friday, her actual birthday, she got to go out to dinner and go shopping with her grandparents. She picks the restaurant, and she picks the presents. She came home with a Los Hermanos t-shirt, a balloon from Toys R Us, a light bright and a small stuffed animal. I think she did alright.
Saturday cake master Julene brought over the cake she had made as per Jenna’s request. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said she wanted “a bunch of white bunny and one orange bunny.” I have no idea why. But when I told Julene that’s what she wanted, she wasn’t deterred. She ended up making the bunnies out of cookies, with one orange cookie bunny in the middle. As usual, it was darling. 
After we went to Dinosaur Museum we came home and had a quick dinner and then ate cake. 
The only problem is–there’s too much cake. It was just the seven of us, instead of the 40 people we had planned on helping us eat the cake. And we don’t need to be eating all of that cake.
I’ve joined in a Biggest Loser Challenge with my sister and some of her friends, in fact, and cake is the last thing I need. But I did save all my points for the day so and passed on the pizza that the kids were having and ate a salad instead, all because I wanted just one piece of cake. And it was indeed extremely yummy cake. A bit too much frosting, which I scraped off, but oh-so-yummy. But I am not made of will power. If there is a cut up cake sitting on the counter for more than 30 minutes, I may find myself snitching. So, first we loaded up a paper plate with six big pieces of yummy cake and took them over to the neighbors. Let them eat cake! They were appreciative, of course. Then I took that cake and portioned it out into individual serving sized containers to be frozen or taken for lunches. It looked like this.
So now that cake is out of sight, and hopefully out of mind.
Friday night Ryan and I had plans to go to see Lord of the Dance. I won the tickets back in November, and it’s been on our calendar for a while. Yes, it was on Jenna’s birthday, but we scheduled something fun for her so she wouldn’t mind that mom and dad were gone. Well, Ryan didn’t want to go, so at the last minute I threw out the invite to a few friends, and my friend Lisa was quick to respond that she wanted to go. So she was my date for the evening, and we had a great time.
The show was incredible! It’s a show basically about good vs. evil, and the dancing is amazing. How do they do that, I’d like to know. And from now on, I think all wars should be fought like that. We select our best dancers and have a dance off to fight our wars. No one gets killed, there may be a few injuries but no casualties, and we all enjoy a real good show. How about it, world leaders?
So, even though our weekend wasn’t what we had planned, things turned out well. We’ll get to do the baptism next month, and hopefully everyone will be healthy and happy then.
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