Another Cool Thing

Boy, am I full of it today! We had our stake choir Easter program on Sunday. I may be a total geek, but I love stake choir. Our director is Fabulous! Oh to have such talent! -excuse me while I wax philisophical- I'm learning, however that we need to not worry about what talents we don't have and be greatful for the ones we do have and do the best we can with them. We each have our own role to play in Heavenly Father's plan that no one else can do. We need to be ourselves, and be the best ourselves that we can. What an insult to our Creator to spend our time whining about the gifts we don't have, and not to discover, develop and love the ones that He has given us. -okay, I'm done.- Well, the program went well. For being a church choir, we are darn good! Emily does such a good job! Anyway, the great part is that Harlan & Georgian came! I nearly did a little dance of joy right there on the stand when I saw them come in. Harlan was my piano teacher in college. He's one of my very favorite people in the world. Truly. Such a great teacher, and a great man! Love him so much! Georgian, his wife is a perfect compliment to him too. She's great! Anyway, yay yay yay! I may be a dork, but it totally made my day, week, month, I don't know. I've really got to go now. See you!

My Week of March the 20 Something to March the 20 Something Else

My Little Imitator:

Here's Justice trying to clean the table.

The Procrastinating Artist:

Lydia came to me yesterday and told me that she wanted to enter the recycled milk jug lid contest. Unfortunately, the due date was the next day (today). So, we got to work on building the St. Louis Arch, her idea. We spent about an hour and a half to two hours hot gluing these milk jug lids together. After we were through, we went to my mom & dad's for dinner & family night. When we got home, it had broken and fallen over. Dang! Bruce & I stayed up late fixing it. We ended up drilling a hole through them all and stringing them on coat hanger. I just Love school projects! Not! But it did give Lydia & I two hours of quality time together.

Oh NO! We have another TV watcher!

Jumping the Gun on Some Summer Fun:

Ross had been bugging me for days to play in the sprinkler. I kept telling him that it wasn't that warm yet. Saturday, the whether was so nice, and he bugged some more, and Bruce relented. They were cold, but they had a good time.

One Man's Trash...

We went over to my mom & dad's house last night for family night. We had a lovely evening walk, in this wonderful, spring whether. It was the night before trash day. My parents' next door neighbor is moving soon so he had a rather large pile. Sticking out of a box were several balls, bats and other sports equipment. When we got back from our walk, my kids couldn't resist going over and trash digging. It was a hoot! My three oldest children, Bruce and my dad were all over there digging in this guys trash! The kids kept yelling out things like "Mom, I got a tennis racket!" "Mom, I got a soccer ball!" "Mom a baseball bat!" Embarrassing. Oh well. Bruce did pull out a guitar! It seem just fine, at least from what little I know about them. I've been wanting to learn guitar forever. Now I'll just have to run over to the music store and buy myself a book and teach myself! How cool is that?

This and That

I hope that my aunt Marsha (my total idol by the way, I soo want to be Marsha when I grow up, how great is this woman?) anyway, I hope that she (or my cousin, Becky) won't mind me posting this, but it was too funny not to share! Marsha told me that she and her hubby, Reid had taken their grandsons (about four of them anyway) out. They were at a restaurant, and the boys were acting like little boys will, kind of wild. Quinn, the milder mannered brother, who is about 7 or 8 years old, leaned over to Marsha, and pointing to his brother, says "I usually have to punch him in the crotch to get him to settle down." Reid just about spit out his soda and says "What?!" Quinn, looks at him with a -yeah, I do it all the time- kind of look and says "Well, it usually works."

What else is going on around here? Construction still, I almost have my piano room done, and our living room is well underway. I'm contemplating doing a marathon. I've come to the conclusion that I won't be happy unless I do one at least once in my lifetime. So, I've been looking up training schedules on-line. I'll have to find one close by. I'm thinking of shooting for the fall 2007. That way I have plenty of time to get ready, and it won't be too hot. I die in the heat! Can't run at all past about 80 degrees. Its a flaw in my physical make-up. I don't sweat enough, so I cook myself. Not a good thing. If anybody knows any remedies to make you sweat more, I'd love to hear them! Well, that's it for now. Love you all! Thanks for reading me!

The Inevitable

Well, it finally happened! I knew my luck couldn't hold out forever, but the day has finally arrived: I embarrassed Lydia in front of her friends. It happened like this: We, the parents, were supposed to send encouraging letters to our 3rd graders to psych them up for their ISAT tests. (Big meany, scary, nation-wide tests that 3rd graders must take) The teacher smuggles the letters onto the childrens' desks for a nice surprise. Well, this I did, telling her how wonderful I think she is, how loved, etc. In the spirit of "The Kissing Hand," I put a lipstick kiss at the bottom of the page. Alas for sentiment, this was deemed highly embarrassing! She made the "mad toilet flushing" noise at me when she got home. (A noise she makes that's kind of a hiss / growl, which I call the "mad toilet" noise.) I should have known that kissing parents was embarrassing at this stage of development. I used to kiss Ross's hand everyday when he was in Kindergarten. He liked it very much, and it got him through a rough patch of separation anxiety. Oh well, I guess I should join the crowd of "uncool" parents!

Some Recent Pictures

Lydia & Justice

Mark on the Trampoline

The kids are loving going to Tae Kwon Do with their dad!

(Dad's having a good time too!)

Ross & Lydia

How I wish she could stay like this forever!

The Best Weekend

I've almost been avoiding posting since this weekend, because I had such a great weekend that I don't know how to do it Justice. Amy, my best friend for the past 20 years, kidnapped me. She planned it all out six months ago, and with Bruce's help, they completely took me by surprise! I had no clue anything was going on, until Amy showed up unexpectedly at my house Friday morning and Bruce tossed my packed bags at my feet, and told me to be gone and have a good weekend.

We went on a road trip to Kansas City to go to the Time Out For Women. (An LDS Conference thing for women) It was totally great, and exactly what I needed. I've been having a hard time accomplishing all of the things that need to be done around here. That's usual, but it's been especially bad since we've been doing the remodeling, because I've been trying desperately to get that done too. Anyway, I went to bed Thursday feeling totally frustrated, discouraged, enslaved, and like a total failure. I went to sleep praying, begging the Lord for some relief. Friday morning, Bruce wakes me up (the kids were off school for teacher conferences) and tells me to get in the shower. "No, I just want to lay here for a while." I say. After all, I never get to sleep past about 6:30. "I need a day off!" I told him. Little did I know...

Well the thing was totally wonderful. I cried a lot! I cried when I found out what was going on. Cried some more when I thought how wonderful my Amy was to me, cried some more when I thought about how my prayers had been answered. We also laughed a lot! We got totally screwed up getting from our hotel to the convention center. So many funny things getting in our way of getting there! It should have been about a 10 minute trip, but it took us over an hour. I was cracking up! It all started with us having to go into the hotel and ask how to get out of the parking lot! You know you are in trouble when you can't even figure how to get out of the parking lot! (There was a barricade thing there, and you had to use your room key for it to let you through, only we were putting it in the wrong slot.) Among other things, someone mistook a dumpster for an ATM. It was just one thing after another! We did manage to make it there on time, however and had a great time. Saturday's conference was totally uplifting. I cried a lot more. I told Hilary Week's (famous Mormon musician) that she was "just awful" to her face. I was totally kidding, and she knew it. Sherry Dew was there, Jane Clayson Johnson, Lloyd Newell, and other famous Mormon folks. Anyway, it was great! Though things around here are not doing themselves since I came back, I feel much rejuvenated, and better equipped to handle them. There you have it. I'll stop my foolish gushing.

Yay! It worked! Ah childhood memories!

Okay, John joined! Now you will all have to check out our cool blog of childhood shenanigans. It'll be a laugh! (By the way, incase you didn't notice already, it's on my link list.)

Giving It Another Try

I tried, about a million years ago, to start a blog between my brother John and I. This blog was to be about our many amusing hijinks as children and young adults. Something went awry in cyberspace, however, and John wasn't able to join. We are trying again. You'll note the new link on my link list, entitled John and I, or John and Me or something like that. That is a link to our blog. Enjoy! (Hope it works.)

A Jumble of Different Topics

My hair after I had been sanding the dry-wall mud.

Justice fell asleep under the piano while I was playing it.

Jonni

Cousins

Self explainitory


Life around here lately:


Our house is currently torn apart, as we are putting up new sub-walls in the piano & living rooms, to add insualtion. My living room is now in the basement. But it'll be so great when it's done! New paint, new rugs, some cool tile things that I'm planning to do, and we'll give the floors a strip & a shine. Can't wait! Then we move on to my bedroom, then the children's bedrooms, bathrooms, etc. Fun Fun Fun.


Amy installed a game called popcap on our computer for the kids, and John & Bruce & I have been playing it a lot. Too funny. We enjoy it, kind of a boggle / scrabble type game.

Here's a link: http://popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=bwa

I ran 8 1/2 miles of all hills on Saturday. Am I a stud or what? (What.)

We had our 2nd round of the stomach flu within the past 2 or 3 weeks. Yay! The first round got nicknamed the J-Bird Flu because Justice was the first to get it. We passed it on throughout our house, to both of Bruce's parents and to everyone in my parents' household. We were trying to see how many different states we could send the flu to. (of course we weren't trying!) Bruce's dad incubated it on his way to Alabama, we rather ruined his trip. Sarah stopped by on her way out of town to drop off her dog. And our neighbor (who is a pilot, and travels all over the country) stopped by on just as they were leaving for California. Everyone got better for about two weeks, then my neice Jonni came into town and she and two of my boys started throwing up. I hear that we got my sister-in law, Suzanne sick too. Sorry everyone!



Skip this paragraph if you are weak of stomach! This means you, Suzanne :)

Sunday I was awakened at about 4:30 am, by the need of me cleaning up about 3 or 4 barf messes. Joy! So many blankets and sheets to wash! Ugh! I finally laid back down at around 6:00 only to be reawakened by Lydia telling me that Justice had had an explosion up in his crib. Sure enough, his diaper could not contain the massive amount of poo that he had dished out. It was all the way up his back, and into his hair, down both arms, in the crib. More blankets and sheets.


I am happy to report that we are all currently well. (Except maybe Suzanne, again sorry!)



Ross woke up from a nap to say that he dreamed that he didn't exist.



Well that's all I can think of for now, and I really need to get to bed. Running at 5:00 tomorrow morning!