Sunday Conversation

Cindy: "Do you want to walk to church today?"

Brent: "Nooo." (thinks it's too hot)

Cindy: "What kind of example are we setting for our children? That when you grow up you...drive everywhere?"

Brent: "When I was a kid we drove to church every Sunday. Now we walk when the weather is nice."

Cindy: "What qualifies as nice weather? Between 75 and 85 degrees? That only adds up to about a dozen days a year!"

Brent: "And only two of them are on Sunday." (laughs)

School Supplies!

I was starting to feel anxious about going back to school next month. But then I realized, I get to shop for my own school supplies this year. It helps, a little. Brent suggested I get a Trapper Keeper, however, they didn't have them at Wal Mart and I'd need the nerdy 1980s variety anyway.

Kids Are Useful

Isabella made dinner

How Many Have You Read?

I saw this on another blog:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice -
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee -
6 The Bible-
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien -
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll-
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma - Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne-
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood-
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens-
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez-
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck-
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie –
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville-
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno – Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt –
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

I've read 15. Some I haven't (or rather never) finished, however. I'm sure many of you could do much better than I did. I love books but I don't completely love reading. I wish I did. Get bored and distracted too easily. I was surprised at some of the books on the list. "The Da Vinci Code" was entertaining but I wouldn't call it great literature or anything (just my opinion). I was surprised "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" was on the list. That was an obscure book I found for book group a couple of years ago, trying to find something different. Maybe it's not as obscure as I thought. We didn't end up reading it because there was a little too much "language" in it. Ended up reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter", which was a good book. I also like to read non fiction too but this is a good list to work on.
The last book I read, a couple of weeks ago, was "The Actor and the Housewife" by Shannon Hale. It's about a housewife who becomes best friends with a famous British actor. Improbable premise, but a fun read. Although it did have some irritating elements to it.

Books I'm currently reading (sort of anyway):
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I really need to finally read a Jane Austen book.)
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (How controversial could this book be, really? It was written in 1945!)
The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman (Wal-Mart practically controls America, boring book though.)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

What are your thoughts? What would you add to this list? How many have you read? Go ahead, embarrass me!

Anti-Anti-Dentite

Today I took the kids to the dentist. Ending my five year stint as an Anti-Dentite. No cavities! Maybe I'm not a complete failure as a mom. Maybe my dental insurance isn't the world's worst dental insurance. Maybe dentistry isn't a sham after all!

Domestic Bliss

We went away for the 4th of July weekend and stayed in a hotel. Noah, of course, threw up on his sleeping bag. Isabella did too after drinking the big slushy drink and then going swimming and jumping repeatedly into the hotel pool. Luckily, she made it to the bathroom with no mess involved. What's up with my kids and throwing up in hotels anyway? So the sleeping bag has been waiting for me to take it to the laundromat to wash the barfy smell out of it. (The mess was wiped up well enough but the stink remained, of course.) I also needed to get the quilt on our bed washed since it is also too big to put in the washing machine and honestly, I don't recall ever washing it. So I figured, might as well make a day of it so I (and the girls) stripped every bed in the house, loaded up the van, and took off with the kids for the laundromat I had recently noticed next to the Albertsons. I know, I'm goofy, nutty, crazy, whatever you want to call it but I was so excited when I entered that laundromat. It was so clean! And organized! One wall full of nothing but washers and the opposite wall filled with dryers and lots of clean tables to fold things on! Impressive, I tell you. We got there just as a woman was unloading the four super-sized washers and filled them all up plus one smaller washer. While the stuff was washing, the kids each got their summer school workbook page done. The girls got their daily reading done while everything was drying. We had time to walk over to the bank next door too. It all took about 2 1/2 hours rather than the All Day+ project it would have been at home!

1 sleeping bag, 1 blanket, 2 comforters, 4 quilts, a bunch of sheets and pillowcases and shams equals: One Happy Me!

Remember When....

Remember when you became friends with your son's kindergarten teacher and she came over so you could go to the park for lunch with her and all of your kids? Remember when you went to the park and the kids were playing after lunch and your son decided to throw a rock at a tree to try to hit a piece of wood that was stuck in the tree? Remember how his aim was WAY OFF and he hit your friend in the head with the rock and she began to bleed profusely?

Remember that?



*She's okay. Didn't need stitches or anything. Still feel like crap about it though.

What DO You Do In The Summertime??

First it was all cold and rainy and we didn't know what to do. So we went bowling. Me and the kids. They all kicked my butt. I haven't improved much since I was a girl of ten and on a bowling league with my siblings. What was that score I got on that one game back then? Oh yeah, a 5. Five! Do you know what the highest score in bowling is? That's right, 300. And bowling is supposed to be in my genes. Well, I didn't do quite as poorly this time. Got into the 70s in the second game. And the kids were using the bumpers. The bowling attendant wouldn't let me use the bumpers.

Then it was too HOT! Just a week later. We had to get out of the house. Hot and bored. Bad combination. So into the "big city" we drive. I have a new scheme in mind. I want to learn to play the guitar. I know! My secret calling in life is to play kick *@&* piano on stage while singing songs with thought provoking lyrics. Oh, wait. That's not my life. It's Ben Folds'. Anyway, I haven't given up on my secret, inevitable passion. But I've moved on to the guitar. I thought, since I'm going back to school with hopes of pursuing a degree in elementary ed. some day, that learning to play the guitar could be a fun asset. Do a little "This Land Is Your Land" and "Kumbaya" with the students. Yes, I realize it is not, in fact, 1978. I'll have to learn some new songs. So Zoe wanted to go look at guitars so we headed out to Target. Just window shopping. It turns out that Adam Levine of Maroon 5 has his own line of guitars over at Target, along with a lesson manual with a few of his band's hits to learn to play. Who knew? Mighty enticing, but we're not quite ready to commit just yet.

So from there it was off to PetSmart to browse the pets. We have no pets, as you may know. But it can't hurt to look, right? Stinkiest store I have ever been in. But, pets we did see. Fish, reptiles, vermin, etc., etc. I was tempted to get a simple little goldfish but no one helpful was around and we've already had one regrettable fish incident and didn't need another on our hands. So I needed to know what to do to keep this thing alive at least for a couple of weeks. We all thought the little hamster and white mice were cute, spinning around in their little wheels. But then you see about six of them crammed on one wheel, spinning and spinning and spinning. After a little bit you start thinking too much about those little spinning rodents and you start to get a little nauseous. I start softening though and thinking: Oh, a little pet. Wouldn't it be fun for the kids? But then I remember. Every animal poops. I don't need the extra excrement. I was softening a bit, though. Maybe someday I'll cave in and my poor children will get that furry critter they've been wanting. Maybe a lizard.

We finally left the pet store and made our way over to the shady Jordan River Parkway. The pond and playground were looking up this time around. They've implemented a "Do Not Feed The Ducks" policy (and sign). The place is no longer full of bird doo doo. Or crazy ducks and geese. Yeah, it was fun feeding the birds, but not worth the mess. So I was happy about the change. The kids played on the playground for a bit then we went for a walk down the parkway path. Very patriotic people live by the parkway in this area. There was nary a home without a flagpole and old glory waving. Very patriotic. We made it to the bridge and the wind was kicking up again and the rain was on its way, and Noah was tired of walking. So we made our way back to the car and returned home from our hot summer's day journey.

Reunion Week

So how did the twenty year reunion go, anyway? Well, let me tell you....it was kind of fun and kind of boring. There's not a ton to tell about the actual reunion. It was five hours of dinner and mingling. With a silly song performed by a couple classmates thrown in for good measure. The most notable thing was seeing a room full of people my age. Seriously, I live in a place surrounded by people who are a few years younger than me. Most of them are 5-10 years younger. A few are older. Very few are the same age as me. It's fine. Whatever. It's just a little surreal being in a room of around 200 people where nearly everyone there is 37 or 38 years old. It was sort of like, huh...so we're really not in our twenties anymore. Hmm.
The next day was lunch with some of the old girlfriends. That was fun. This wasn't anything new. We get together every year or two when we're all around. A couple of days later was the Murray/Jordan shindig/brawl/smackdown/et al. Back in high school some of my friends and I had a group of friends from Murray High School. The Murray Guys, as they were known. Yeah, I know, not that creative. How do I describe them? I don't know. They were just great guys and tons of fun. It was great to see how they were, see and hear about their families. Tell old stories. Stories like when we got into the fender bender on the way to pick everyone up for the homecoming dance after we talked Sor into driving (even though his parents were out of town and told him, "DO NOT DRIVE THE SUBURBAN.") And how Barn (Brian) and Sor (Bryan) would drive around with Skippy (Chris) in the trunk of their car. Goofy teenage stuff. But they were good, fun guys. The kind of guys you hope your daughters will have as friends when they are teenagers.

Then

Jason, Candie, Sor, Becky, Me, Dave

Now
Me, Becky, Barn (paper plate stand in), Steve,
Mindy, Candie, Sor

Twenty Years Ago

I cannot believe I have been out of high school for twenty years! I was thinking I don't feel that old but I think I'm changing that to "38 isn't old, darn it!" Tomorrow is the Jordan High School Class of 1989 20 year reunion. I wanted to go, then I didn't. I'd seen all these people on facebook so I didn't think I really needed to see them in person since I'd seen their pictures, and kids' pictures, employment status, etc. But my good friend Becky, who I've kept in touch with all these years, talked me into going. So now that it's here (almost), I'm kind of excited. Don't have super high expectations. Don't have to settle any old issues or find "closure" with anyone. So we'll just be hanging out in the back corner, making fun of people. Okay, not really (not much anyway). I did hear of a fun game Brent and I can play if we get bored. It's called "Who Won". The way you play is you look at a couple and decide who got the best deal, or is the winner, in the pairing. I hear it's great to play while standing in lines at Disneyland.

You were wondering what I looked like twenty years ago, right?

Summertime....It's Time

School is officially out! Yesterday was the last day for Isabella and Zoe, Noah finished last week. I'll spare you the harrowing, psychological drama that is swirling through my head over having all three of my kids in school full time next year and how it's the end of a significant part of raising our family. A milestone moment, if you will....met with all sorts of mixed feelings!!!!

Zoe is starting off the summer sick, poor girl. Monday we will start our "summer school" books. Those are just workbooks we do on our own to make sure the kids brains don't turn to mush. Just a page a day and reading too, of course. I've got a million organizing projects to get done this summer. You know when you move into a house, like seven and a half years ago, and you stick stuff in cabinets and closets and never see it again? I've got lots of that to deal with. Plus the rest of the junk that has been crammed in front of it all. I'm not an organized person. Correction, I am surface organized. You know, everything you can see out in the open looks nice and neat (I actually consider it a compliment that I've been called a Stepford Wife before), but if you open a drawer or closet door it's complete and utter chaos. So we'll be working on alleviating this problem, at least until the next seven and a half years rolls around. I'll be cracking the whip at the children. Most of it for a nominal fee though. Teach them the value of earning a buck.

Other events on the horizon (So you know I'm not just a mean old mom):
Swim lessons for Isabella and Noah
Summer School for Zoe (her idea)
Piano lessons for Isabella and Zoe (let's see if we can finally get this thing going)
and hopefully some fun adventures!