Cooking Class

Isabella's friend Amber.... Her mom asked some of us if we wanted to do a monthly cooking class with the girls, rotating months. So this month was my turn and veggies were on the menu. It turned out to be a lot of fun with the girls, no one was injured with all of those knives cutting vegetables, and I think they may have learned something too!

A cornucopia of vegetables!

Vegetable Chowder

Vegetable Skeleton (in honor of Halloween)

Old Pics, Just For Fun

I did this blog post over the weekend but didn't like it so I removed it. I still like these old pictures that I had on the post though, so what the hay, I'll just stick them on:

Little Bella

Little Zoe

Little Noah

Can't a girl miss those baby days once in a while? Maybe I should cut my crazy hair off again too.

This picture was from Isabella's Kindergarten birthday party, six years ago. It cracks me up because it reminds me of the cover of an album from the '80s or early '90s.

Now off to study for my Computer Information Resources test I have tonight. I'm learning all sorts of things that 13 year olds already know.

Insanely Stupid

I do not have my finger on the pulse of all things tween. I tend to think that despite that, I'm still a good mom. I've still got the whole Big Picture thing going for me. Today, however, I almost blew it as a tween mom. Tomorrow is Zoe's 10th birthday. Today I got a phone call from her soccer coach and was offered free tickets to Miley Cyrus. Of course I said,"Woohoo! She's going to love that! I'm going to be a hero! Thank you so much!" Okay, I didn't really say that. What I said was "No thanks, it's Zoe's birthday." The coach's response was, "Oh, she's having a birthday party?" My response to him was, "No". So I say goodbye and hang up on the man who just offered me FREE tickets to Myley Cyrus on my daughter's 10th birthday. Immediately I know I am now in the doghouse. She's going to hear about this. She's going to be sad because her BFF is going. I've just ruined my kid's birthday!

Isabella is going to hear about this too and how I could have gotten three tickets. Isabella asked me why we couldn't go to her concert a couple of years ago. My response, "I didn't even know she was coming until the day after". See, no finger on the pulse of what tweens want there. Then she asked last summer, "Why can't we go to Stadium of Fire and see the Jonas Brothers?" I answered, "Because we don't like giant crowds and traffic on the 4th of July and Stadium of Fire is just a little too Republican Rally for our taste. I prefer my holidays nonpartisan." (Don't be offended by this anyone, I'm just joking. I've never been there. Not joking about traffic though. 4th of July, 1989, Phoenix, AZ, literally FOUR hours in traffic!) She wouldn't have to ask me why we couldn't go this time, her answer would be, "My mom is mean and clearly hates me!"

Why did I think it was so important to keep my kid home on her birthday so we could open presents and eat cake and ice cream together? Because those are our big plans. Fortunately, I realized I was being stupid and insane and called the coach back up and told him I may have been the teensiest bit hasty in my initial response. Luckily, his offer hadn't expired and I was still able to get the free tickets. I'm going to have to milk this hero mom thing for all it's worth.

I'm Gettin' Political....Just Barely Though

How can anyone think that this man is NOT completely full of crap?

Ramble Ramble

First of all, I'm sitting here on my computer typing while listening to my blog music on the laptop. Pernice Brother's, I like you, even if I first heard of you by watching a Sherwin Williams commercial. It's just more fun to use two computers at once, and the sound quality on the laptop is oh so superior. Gives a nice a.m. radio vibe. I've done pretty much nothing constructive all day because I've gone brain dead from studying for 3 hours for a five question online math quiz this morning. Five questions? Really? So my brain is all fried because I'm not used to counting so much and I'm not sure I can even always identify the associative property of addition at all times and places. I've also been thinking and reading way too much political junk lately. I know I shouldn't do that. Another reason to get off facebook. Would someone just give Glenn Beck a bunker already? So I have to go to the store, to buy chocolate, of course, to combat the buzz in my head from the math and the politics. I'm driving down the highway and a slow truck ends up in front of me carrying a load of wood board things from the Home Depot. Probably finishing his basement. He's driving way slow and next to him, driving slow, is an old man on a motorcycle with a baseball cap on. We all stop at a light and he pulls on his goggles. The kind you use as protective eye wear for power tools and in high school chemistry labs. No real point here except I thought you might enjoy picturing the old man in the baseball cap and protective goggles on his motorcycle. He did pick up some speed and totally beat the guy with the wood board things in the back of his truck. Anyway, I got my chocolate and felt better so I could do the dishes. So there you go, something productive done.

You may ask, how is school going anyway? Well, let me tell you. The first week we had a lecture in my computer class, the professor taught us how to format our computers, even though if we followed her advice being the clueless computer people some of us are (okay, just me) it could have had catastrophic results. Okay, catastrophic may be a bit dramatic, and she did say, "Do Not Do This!" Then why did you show me how too? I'll just stick with the more important information, how to name my C drive after myself. What else? The other day I got to school a few minutes early and was hanging out in what can only be described as the student union of a one building college campus. I was there maybe six minutes and two people asked me if I had an appointment. I never had that kind of service just sitting around between classes at BYU. But then I was usually asleep on a couch in a bathroom or at the library, drooling on my homework. Hey, you try staying up 'til midnight with your super fun roommates, going to work at 3:30 am on campus as a janitor, and going to your 7:30 am class without falling asleep in a puddle of your own drool on your homework. The good news is I can now remember how to add 3/5+79/8 and get the right denominator and all that. So I'm getting used to everything. It helps that the kids' first week of school is done and my blood pressure has gone back down from my brain being yanked around in twenty nine different directions. And I no longer feel like I'm ruining my kids' lives because I'm thinking about algebra at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon instead of my kids and how maybe I should go spy on them on the playground at recess because Noah is in first grade now and I'm lonely. The good thing about being alone so much now? My mind wanders off into lots of bloggable rambling. Okay, it's probably not very bloggable, but entertains me anyway. And that's the real purpose of having a blog, right?

Back To School Pics

Some cute back to school pics, even though they've already been seen by pretty much everyone on facebook. Worlds colliding again! Maybe they are right that facebook is a waste of time. Hmm.

They are definitely growing up way too fast!

Remember This?

Remember Pay It Forward?
I finally got around to doing the projects for it sometime during the summer. At first I was thinking: What have I done? Why did I sign on to do this? But I had a project idea I was wanting to try out so I decided to give it a try and it was actually pretty fun. I do like a good craft every now and then, after all. I still need to send some out so send me your address, okay! Yeah, you! :)

Summer Is Over *Sigh*

It was a great summer with the kids home. I love having them home in the summer and I'm always sad when they go back to school. Yes, I'm the one with the red face and watery eyes walking down the hall on the first day of school after doing the drop off, trying to compose myself. Here are some of the fun things we did, trying to squeeze in fun 'til the last day:

*4th of July in Logan for a mini vacation.
*We went to our first Real soccer game on the 24th of July. It was so fun! I knew soccer kicks baseball's and football's behind!
*Trips to the Gateway to play in the fountain and visit Clark Planetarium and Discovery Gateway (the children's museum).
*Trips to the pool. Noah can now swim and go down the water slide without floaties!
*Playing in the water at Liberty Park.
*Two trips to Lagoon this summer because I finally got brave enough to take the kids back by myself on the Bounce Back day (double the fun and nausea). They all dared to ride lots of roller coasters this year!
*The annual camping trip where we hiked to Dog Lake and saw no less than 13 dogs, many of them swimming in the lake even though there was a water shed sign that said no dogs in the water. (Irony?)
*Back to school shopping (of course). The most challenging back to school shopping trip to date. (Girl going into sixth grade, she's got her image to think of.)
*Back to school weekend outings. Friday we had a picnic at the park, followed by the new Miyazaki animated movie, "Ponyo". Saturday we went to the Museum of Natural History up at the U., followed by dinner at Macaroni Grill. We even had something fun to do on Sunday. Birthday party for Grandpa Richard. Lots of fun packed in one weekend!
*Kids got a lot of their summer school stuff done and the girls were even able to earn some money by tutoring Noah. Bribery or teaching responsibility? It's a fine line.

Good times o'plenty. I have the best kids!

I Win!

Every once in a while Brent and I play this game without trying where he tells a story about his childhood that he finds sort of crazy. We all have those stories, especially if you were fortunate enough to be a kid in the 1970s. He tells his story and then I tell my own version of the story and make his story look a little, well.... let's just say I win the story contest every time.

Example: Brent's talking while we're driving in the car the other day and tells me about the time he went down with the scouts to sand bag the State Street River (big flood around 1983 or so, as kids we all found it fascinating) and his parents let him ride in the back of So and So's truck, unrestrained. It was so unlike them. (Disclaimer to Brent's parents: You were great parents, otherwise Brent wouldn't have turned out so great!) So I tell my own story: That reminds me, when I was five or six and we were moving, we had this moving truck and after we unloaded the truck at our new house my dad let me and the sibs ride back to our old house in the back of the empty moving truck. We were running around in it, great fun! Then there was that time when we got a new car and you could put the back seats down to make more room in the trunk. My dad let us climb into the trunk through the back seat and put the seat back up then he gave each of us a ride around town while we were in the trunk. Or what about my Stepdad, Chuck? I remember when we were staying in a hotel and he told me and my brother to come around the corner to check out....( words I cannot in good conscience type on the internet) or when I was 19, shortly before I left for BYU, and a date came to pick me up...(words that would force you to gouge your very own eyes out) ...washcloth. These stories amuse, horrify and annoy Brent (annoy because I feel the need to win the story telling contest, but he will always beat me at strategy board games so we're even). This is why some people were raised in crazy, disfunctional families, so we can later amuse and entertain ourselves and those around us with crazy stories of way back when.

I do know my family wasn't the craziest family out there. If Brent had been raised by a couple of junkies or free loving hippies I'm sure his stories would win every time.

*Posts like this are what happens when you give your family your blog address and they have no interest in reading it. :)

A Story In A Story

Last night Brent and I watched the movie "New York Doll". It tells the story of Arthur "Killer" Kane who was a guitarist for the punk glam rock band (or something like that), New York Dolls in the 1970s. The band didn't have great success and after, he goes on to have a hard life with drugs and the typical washed up rock star stuff. After a terrible accident that almost kills him he joins the Mormon Church and it portrays his life as a poor, humble Mormon working in the Family History Library by the Los Angeles Temple (I think it's the Los Angeles Temple anyway). It was an interesting, sweet and sad documentary of his life as a Mormon and when he finally gets his shot at reuniting with his old band. One of the best parts was the interview with Morrissey (of the Smith's) in the extras when he calls the hair bands of the '80s basically no talents with no original ideas of their own (I thought it was funny), but I digress. Another interesting part in the extras was the creepy band leader singing the LDS hymn Come Come Ye Saints. He actually does a pretty good job.

So the movie ends and I guess I'm in a music documentary sort of mood so I pop in Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). A documentary about the musical career of They Might Be Giants. Watching this reminded me of Christmas, 2003. I got this movie for Brent for Christmas in 2003.
A few years before that I'd gone to my OBGYN who said after Zoe was born I could come for any old thing, not just baby and woman issues. (Don't listen to you OBGYN if he tells you this. First of all he doesn't really mean it. Second, well just look at the advice he gave me, enough said.) So I got a cholesterol test from him. He told me I had high cholesterol and told me to read the book "Protein Power". This book advised me to return my bread maker I had just got for Christmas, exchange it for a weight bench and start eating tons of protein. Okay, it didn't literally give me that advice, but that is what I took from it. Fortunately, I could never commit to my new meaty lifestyle and I never really got into the weight bench as I prefer DVDs and free weights (it ended up at the D.I. a few years later) but being on the verge of a heart attack was never too far from my mind.
So in the early winter of 2003 I noticed my left arm started hurting. I should also mention there was some stress going on in my simple stay at home mom life. I had two girls and a baby boy who was almost one. It was also the year the Iraq war started and I tend to take trouble in the world very seriously. I started having pain in my left arm. I am a certifiable hypochondriac (semi recovered) so you know what pain in the left arm has to mean. I wasn't sleeping well at night. I'd lie there after Brent went to sleep and my heart would start to beat fast and I was afraid to go to sleep, lest I wake up dead. It got worse as the days approached Christmas. On Christmas Eve I remember we went to Brent's Dad's house for the traditional Pre Christmas festivities: scriptures, treats, present opening, etc. The whole way there I felt weird and sick and anxious. I continued to feel worse and worse while we were there. I couldn't eat anything, really. I do remember eating a couple of m&ms, wondering if they could mean my imminent end. We went home, got the kids to bed and anxiously awaiting Santa Claus. We went to bed shortly after that and I soon heard Brent sleeping. Do you know that feeling at night when you're the only one awake and you feel incredibly alone? I felt like that and I kept feeling strange and anxious, my heart beating rapidly. I was pretty sure at that point I'd be dead in the morning. I lay there waiting for the end to come and finally got up. I turned on the Christmas lights and turned on the TV. It was about 2 am and nothing worth watching was on TV. I remember settling on some weird show on PBS about apostate returned missionaries. It was sad and kind of strange. Finally around 4 am I started to relax enough to doze a little and I went back to bed and went to sleep.
Around 7 or 7:30 we got up because it was Christmas morning and woke up the kids because Santa had come (maybe while I was dozing on the couch). Strangely, I felt much better but I was dead tired. We didn't have anywhere to go until the evening when we went to Brent's Mom's house for dinner. So I remember lazing around the living room in our pajamas for many hours and while the kids were playing with their new toys we put on Brent's new movie, Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). We watched it and I was feeling very tired but relieved I'd lived to spend Christmas day with my husband and kids.
I kept having these "episodes". I'd occasionally wake Brent up and tell him I just felt weird. I'd be having heart palpitations and my arm still hurt. He'd humor me for a minute and then go back to sleep. He knows all about my hypochondria. The story neared it's end one night when I woke Brent up, sure I was having a heart attack and made him take me to the E.R. (Crazy!) So we woke up the kids and headed to the hospital. Of course I wasn't having a heart attack. The doctor's only explanation for anything was I had a pinched nerve. I had bought some three inch high heeled boots recently that killed my back whenever I wore them. Remember, I don't wear heels because they bother my back (probably because they force me to stand up straight and there's just too much back length there to regularly do that). This was the climax of my trouble. Having confirmation that I wasn't dying helped me relax some. I think what I was probably experiencing were panic attacks.
The most irrational part of it all is I'd just lost 30 lbs. of baby weight and beyond by doing Weight Watchers. I was working out more than I ever could remember. So besides the extra Christmas treats I really wasn't doing anything to bring on a heart attack. I share this story not to make you think I am completely nuts. But because my kids will read this one day when they are adults or even teenagers and see that their mom had challenging times too. I survived and overcame. And maybe this will help someone else out there too. Who knows? Someday maybe I'll tell you about 2001 and the lead up to the year on happy pills (which were awesome to be on when 9/11 came around, by the way.)


They Might Be Giants-Ana Ng

Mom My Ride

I don't know if this is old or not but I just saw it so I thought I'd share: