Randomness

Ben, seen here with his Christmas underwear, (his favorite gift) has started basketball again. At his first practice, he got a bloody nose from getting hit with the ball. We're hoping it's not a sign of what's to come throughout the season.

I heard Addie saying over and over:

I'm a mama. I'm a mama.

Then I saw that she was wearing my shoes. Pretty cute thing for a mama to hear.

I went ice skating with Elli a few nights ago and I almost lost control of my bladder. We were laughing so hard. It was Ellis first time skating and I hadn't been since forever (10 years?). I was laughing so hard with (and a little at) her trying to stay up and me trying to hold her up. It was fun. Everyone should go ice skating.

Addie was looking through the pictures on my camera (how does she know how to do that? I don't know but she can turn it on and search through pictures) and came across these ones of her and Elli eating olives. Then she turned to me and said:

Mom, I want ovlers.

Embarrassing moment in which I wanted to disappear

Brian's friend has a cousin who lives in our neighborhood. I have seen their name on several other blog lists. I have looked at his wife's blog and a few times shown Brian. "This is the cousin of so-and-so." She is a good photographer and her pictures are fun to look at.

Anyway, we were at the park this past summer. This other couple happened to be there with their kids. I pretended not to know who they were since we've never met and she has no idea who I am. I am sitting on a park bench near the other girl who is swinging her child. Brian recognizes the guy and goes over to talk to him. They talk about the person they know in common. Then I hear Brian saying, "Yeah, my wife reads your wife's blog all the time. "

Melt away into the wood chips

The guy says, "Who does?"

Brian: "My wife" and points at me with the finger of death. They both look at me.

Cease to exist

Here I am. Right near someone who doesn't know me and my husband outs me. OUTS ME! (Let's just clear it up right now that I don't read it "ALL THE TIME" either. "Occasionally" is the word.) I sound like an obsessed stalker. I just sit quietly and hope that the other girl didn't hear that too. But I'm pretty sure she hears it. She's not too far from me. I try and think of a way to talk to her and explain myself.

Finally I have my lines worked out and I look over and a neighbor of the girl has just arrived and they are now talking. I can't interrupt a friendly conversation with my crazy confession. After a while of waiting, it's time to leave. Time to slink away like the shadow I wish I was. We leave as fast as my short legs can carry me. Hopefully I will never see them again but, being in the same neighborhood, it's bound to happen. Maybe I can explain myself then.

On the way home I tell Brian, "Please never again tell someone that I read their blog "ALL THE TIME". He just doesn't know. He doesn't read any blogs. He doesn't even read my blog. He doesn't know the rules. "I can tell someone that I read their blog. But you cannot tell them when I am sitting there pretending that I have never seen them before in my life."

It happened...

And it's never happened before. At least that I can remember. It happened while I was crouching down, sweeping up under the baby's eating area. I heard it. A terrible sound, really. A sound of many bonds breaking. It made me gasp and freeze.

I had ripped my pants.

Guess it's time to lay off the chocolate enrobed macadamia clusters.

True story:

She's just irresistable to strangers. Ha! Just kidding.

I went to a bakery in the next town over and there was an old man in the line in front of me chatting like crazy to the person behind the counter. I was holding Addie so when he turned around he said to her:

Well hello little girl! You are a cutie! Why don't you pick out a treat. I'll buy it for you.

I said: Oh, no. It's okay. She doesn't need anything. (I had gone there to buy treats.)

Old man: No really. Ask her (pointing to the lady behind the counter).

Lady: Yeah, if there are ever any kids in here when he's here, he buys them all treats.

Realizing that he wasn't going to take "no" for an answer I said: Okay, maybe that pink frosted cookie there. Thank you. That's very nice of you.

Old man: So where do you live?

I told him and he said: So you're one of the people who comes through my town are you? What color is your car so I can throw rocks at you as you drive by?

He he. Okay. Bye old man.

Extreme kindness and profuse hostility all in under 5 minutes.

Once upon a time, I wanted pictures taken...

I was so excited to get our family pictures done. I had to use a variation of a buying process that I learned from my brother-in-law called the "buy now discuss later" program. :) Only I hadn't bought them yet I just made the appointment.

This is what would have happened if I said to Brian, "Hey, I want to get our family pictures done."

He would say, "Oh, is your sister coming over to take our picture?"

I would say, "No I want to get professionals done."

He would say, "Well, alright, we can go to JC Penny's"

So this time I just had to say, "We have an appointment for pictures on this date. You know so-and-so in our ward? His brother and sister-in-law take pictures and they're really good."

He said, "How much does it cost?"

"Blankety-blank-blank-blank."

That is the amount of the pictures by the way not the swearing that ensued afterwards from Brian.

Actually, I gave him the wrong price because they had just raised the prices and I had looked at the old pricing and after I told him what I thought was the price, I saw the new pricing. I just thought, well, I'll save up the extra amount and then it will seem like the same price. There was a 3 month wait so I had some time.

So, I didn't end up saving the extra amount. And when we were on our way to the location of our pictures he asked how much it was again.

"Blankety-blank-blank-blank."

That was the swearing.

By that time, the kids had horrible colds with constant runny noses, but there was no rescheduling for 3 months later. We just had to wipe noses every few seconds so it didn't show up in the pictures.

Everything worked out though. It ended up being my Christmas present. Now, I'm not saying everyone should do family pictures this way. But I just HAD to have really nice ones at least once in my life. And there was no way it was ever going to happen unless I took some serious measures.


Sidenote: Brian didn't actually swear, he just said words like, "WHAT?" and, "I thought you said it was going to be..." and "other-such-things-like-that".

I have a question about cameras:

Does anyone have any input on which is best when a camera uses a rechargeable battery vs. alkaline batteries? I'm trying to decide on a camera for myself. My current camera has a rechargeable battery and I like it fine enough. One that I am looking at is the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS and it uses AA batteries and I'm not familiar with a camera like that, I like it cause it's a little smaller than others like it. The other one I am looking at is the Nikon CoolPix P80. It seems like a lot of people love this one but it's just so much bigger than my current camera. Is it really worth it to carry around a bigger camera? Do you know any pros and cons about different batteries? Any advice?

Scary!

This was a real message that we had on our answering machine on Monday:

(in a woman's voice) Hi this is _______, I'm calling from LDS church headquarters, we need Brian to give us a call at _________ for a telephone interview. Thanks.

What?
Who?
Why would they...?
How?
You don't think...?
No way.
Uh-uh.
But why...?
It couldn't be...
Are we in trouble?
Are we not in enough trouble?
WHAT IN THE WORLD!?!

Anyway, a few heart attacks later, and the next day, Brian called them and it turned out to be some survey thing. Why would they do that to people?!

Confession:

The snowfall on Saturday actually got me excited and I even (yes, I'll admit it) turned on some Christmas music. :) I couldn't resist!

Lesson learned

I have been tagged by my friend Jessilyn. I need to go to my 4th folder and 4th picture and post about the picture. Here it is:

This is Addie at 6 months. There's not much of a story here. I noticed that the picture before and the picture after would have had a fun little story to write but this is the fourth picture.

Actually I have a story of why this was just so recent and it's my 4th folder. Our last computer kind of froze up around February so we ended up buying a new one and took the old one someplace to get our files taken out (pictures, documents, music, bank register (we balanced our account on our computer hard drive)). Well, they couldn't get our files out. So we had heard of a place that guarantees that they can get anything out. So we set it aside for the time when we could get it in. (Okay we were procrastinating.) Then just barely last month I was talking to my sister Michelle about it and she said she could try to get our information out (she works with computers for work) and she came over to my house to pick the hard drive up and I asked Brian where it was and he said, "Oh, I threw it away."

?????What?????

I had all my pictures printed out but I had never saved them on any kind of discs. So I do have the actual prints (thank goodness) but if I need them to be on the computer I would have to scan them all in. And I don't have a scanner. So I was a little upset by this. All my Disneyland pictures from January were on there and most importantly, the previous 2 years worth of digital photos.

So the moral of the story is: Don't procrastinate anything when your husband likes to throw things away without telling you. :) Oh and also, put things on a disc.

Weekly menu board

So, I know I am a nerdy nerd. I love to make lists of things. I have lists of ideas of what I could for dinner, then I have my list of groceries to buy for my dinners, and I have my list of what I'm going to make for dinner each day. (Of course there are those weeks when I don't plan and don't have anything to make for dinner.) But I just couldn't resist making this for our super saturday over the weekend. These boards always look like fun when I see them in restaurants. So now my weekly list is a little bigger than before but I'm excited to put it to use.

Anteeksi, puhutteko suomea?

I'm trying to teach myself Finnish. I'm trying to study my book/CD set every day. I have 3 sets of aunts and uncles coming to visit this Friday! (They are staying at my mom's house, not mine.) So of course, I can't do anything unless it's last minute, so I just started this week. He, he. They will be here for 2 weeks. I know I'm probably not going to be able to hold a conversation with any of them with my last minute studying but I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to guess a very small portion of what they are talking about. My title above is from my book and it says, "Excuse me, do you speak Finnish?" When really I should be learning how to say, "Excuse me, do you speak English? Because I won't be able to communicate if one of us doesn't." Oh my goodness! Why haven't I been studying for the 10 years of my adult life? I have always known that I have family who doesn't speak English, why have I not put all my efforts into learning their language so that I can hold a conversation with them? I'll probably do my best learning after they are gone. It's like when someone comes over unexpectedly and my house is a mess. I'm so embarrassed, that when they leave I clean everything up the way it should have looked before they came, but by then it's too late. Voi, voi, voi! (Oh dear!)

I only like tasting part of the rainbow

I really don't like yellow skittles. But I always eat them. I guess I feel like if I want my favorites, (red and purple) then I have to eat the ones I don't like too. I don't want to make other people eat only yellow ones so I don't pick around them. But they are just horrible. I try to mix them with other flavors to make them taste better. They don't. So I finally decided today that I am just going to throw them away. Why make myself eat them when I don't like them? It's just extra sugar that I didn't even enjoy eating. No more! I must enjoy my sugar!

Chopsticks

I was just thinking about chopsticks. I love using them. They are so fun. But only in a restaurant. I don't know why. I use them in a Chinese restaurant and they're so fun and novel and then I bring my leftovers home with extra chopsticks to use the next day... and I can't use them. I get impatient or something. I'm like, what? give me a fork, I don't have time for these. I'm pretty good with them. I'm not impatient in the restaurant. It's really weird. Maybe I only like them with fancy Chinese dishes. Maybe all the dishes and smells and sounds and wall decorations just match up with chopsticks. My dishes, smells, sounds and wall decorations match with forks. My kids use two hands with them (held like drum sticks) and try to pick up one noodle and it always falls off before they can get it to their mouths. I always try to show them how to put their fingers so that they can use them and they just get mad cause they can't do it. Then I saw these little things: (at Kangaroo Zoo of all places (which you should not go to because your kids will get pink eye))

And thought that it would be fun to get these for them so that they can just focus on squeezing and not on how to balance where their fingers go and how tight to hold in which places. They're made of plastic so they're reusable. I really want them. For my kids to use in a restaurant of course. :)

New temple

We drove up to see the new Draper temple. We've gone a few times and they just recently added the Angel Moroni to the top so we had to take some pictures.

They wanted to hug in this picture.

In this one I told them to point to the Angel Moroni. Looks like Ben is making sure he's doing it right.
Boy there are some HUGE houses all around the temple. Mansions! Okay maybe not mansions but VERY BIG. I could drive around forever just staring at all of them.

Tooth question

Since the recent tooth falling out post, I have a question. Do people keep their kids' baby teeth when they fall out? I saved Elli's very first one from the bottom and thought I was only going to save one so she could see how small it was (someday when she's older). Then I threw away her second bottom tooth. (And it was kind of hard to throw it away.) Now I don't know what to do with this one. I keep thinking now I want to show her how small her top tooth was. Is that weird? Maybe no one saves teeth. Maybe I'm a caveman. It just feels so strange to throw something away that was in her body for so long. If her finger fell off, I might save it. Okay, maybe not. But everytime I go to throw it away, I just can't do it. What do people do these days?!

Top 3

Certain words bug me when they're mispronounced, like:

Fustrated instead of frustrated. This one is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

Nucular instead of nuclear. This one used to bug me more than it does now. Ever since the whole Bush thing it's not as bad. It makes me kind of laugh when he does it. I like him, I think he's a smart man but let's face it, some of the things he says just make me laugh, shake my head and sigh.

Evingston instead of Evanston. I know, this one is a city, not a word but when I worked at Wal-Mart after high school, I heard this one lady go on and on about her trip to "Evingston" and I was like did she just say Evingston? Yes, she did. I've heard it several times since and it is awful to hear!

Tired, tired!

We get so many mixed messages these days. We water our lawn once a day and it is a lighter green than other neighbors. We are always hearing to conserve water and that we should only water once every two days. Then our HOA tells us we need a greener lawn. So we're like okay should we water twice a day?! We don't want to get a fine from our beloved HOA.

Sometimes we hear that we shouldn't use animal products for clothing and things. That it's cruel. But then when we use man-made things that come from factories, it causes more chemicals to seep out into the ozone and destroy it.

We hear that the polar ice caps are melting. And that we need to use different light bulbs and car pool in order to save the ice. I read an article that said that they are building lots of "scientific lodges" on the ice bergs so they can study this phenomenon. Don't you think that having people living on the ice melts it more? I'm sure they have to use their little snowmobiles to get around and those engines aren't cold. Also lots of traffic in the ocean in that part of the world is stirring up all that water and ice. Maybe that polar bear was scared since he was being chased by a group of men with cameras and maybe he went to far from home and that's why he couldn't find a place to get out of the water. I've also read that there is oil under the ice caps and every country is already staking out their claim on their piece of land. In other words these people want them to melt.

I realize that we can help in little ways and lots of them are money saving for us, like using a hybrid car or consuming less of certain items. But I'm just tired of feeling guilty that I'm not doing enough. Especially if it's celebrities trying to cause the guilt. Oooooh.

Early to bed is probably wise

I watched the scariest show last night. But it was so interesting too that I couldn't stop watching it. It was called Psychic Kids. It was on A&E. It showed 3 girls who had different senses. One girl could see auras, sometimes so strong that she would get migraines. One girl could predict things from her dreams. If you look here for Tuesday June 17 it shows one of her predictions in clip 5. I think she could see spirits too. And one girl was seeing spirits and they would talk to her. She was always visited by a boy named Freddie Stuart who was killed by his mother in 1886. She would see his mother too and the mother was always angry and this girl was scared of her. Anyway, the parents of the girl didn't know if she really was seeing this or if it was like an imaginary friend. Even the girl didn't know if she was crazy or something. But some experts came and talked to them all and they did some research and found an old census and it really showed a Freddie Stuart (just like she said it was spelled)born in the 1870's whose mother was Christine (which the girl had said too) but it didn't show that he had died. So they knew she wasn't just making it up. It was so scary and I just don't know why some people have experiences like this. Stuff like that gets in my head and I can't stop thinking about it. I kept changing the channel and trying to get my mind off of it but then I would get curious and change it back and then get scared again. Of course it was on late at night. I didn't watch the ending because I made myself change the channel to try to think of other things before I went to bed. I am such a scaredy cat about these things. Even the movie 'The Sixth Sense' scares me to bits. I think it is such a good movie but it takes me a few days to get it out of my mind. I always have to sing a few hymns in my head as I fall asleep. I need to just not watch things like this. But it was interesting.

Crazy hair day

No, I did not stick my finger in an electric outlet.

Yes, I slept in my daughter's foam curlers last night.

No, I didn't picture it looking like this.

Yes, I am crazy for posting a scary picture like this.

Yes, I hope it relaxes a little before I have to take the kids to swimming lessons.

No, you are not going to get to see the back. (There's all kinds of weird parts and kinks back there.)