6 Leaf Clover

On Friday the kids were out playing. Daria ran up to me and yelled "Mom! I found a six leaf clover!". I have included the picture of the special clover. I didn't have the heart to tell her that this was actually two clover plants. It was cute anyway.

Today has been a good day.

I took Dustin to Academy Sports to buy him his new soccer shoes and shin guards. I was pleased with myself since I'm back to my cash budget. I was able to get the shoes for $8.99 and socks with shin guards in them for $8.99. Not a bad purchase. I did realize that as strange as it sounds Academy presents the same temptation to me as Target does. Academy has some great casual clothes, and usually for a great price. They had a lot of items on clearance, which would have been a totally good deal. I chose to stick with my budget.

It's still cold here. I can't seem to get warm today. Daria the "hot natured" person actually wore a sweater to school. Amazing.

The only disappointment of today was the tearing down of the thick trees that were across from the elementary school. I just cringe every time I see trees being torn down. The area we live in is heavily wooded, but in such an amazingly fast rate the trees are being bulldozed down to make room for new retail centers. Dustin and I went and took pictures before all of the trees are gone. Had I realized this would bother me so much I would have gone to school for a land conservationist years ago. Last summer my friend Jenni and I drove all around and filmed and took pictures of the area. Even since then it is remarkable how many trees have been torn down.

I just had to take a picture of this mess of wires. I don't know why it cracked me up. I suppose it's because this is what the back of my desk must look like. A tangle of wires. I have never seen such a site on a public utility wire and had to chalk this one up for historical purposes!!!

Idiosyncrasies

The other day my friend Becky tagged me with the subject "idiosyncrasies". After reading hers and almost falling on the floor laughing, I tried to think of my own. Empty thoughts occurred momentarily and I remembered how I mentioned in my last post that I was just too darn serious. Could I be that serious that I don't even have any funny idiosyncrasies to tell on myself? OK, none as funny as Becky's feet, and the rest are probably to embarrassing to tell. But today I thought of two things. Here's to all the world that I'm just as human as the rest of us!

1. Eating before dinner. It never fails, whether I'm making breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the kids can never wait. "Can I have a bite?", "Can I try that?", and with sneaky swift fingers I can often catch them grabbing nibbles here and there. I have no clue why this bothers me. I think there is some unwritten rule of mothers that we think our kids will fill up on the nibbles before the rest of the food even hits the table, and of course who would dare nibble before giving thanks! So here is the idiosyncrasy of it. I of course, being the cook have to try what I'm cooking. Somehow the adult stomach has no problem nibbling right before we sit down to eat before giving thanks. HHHMmm this has given me some "food for thought", I must change my ways and share the nibbles before dinner!

2. Dates. For some reason I collect dates. Well, it's not precisely that I collect dates but I think dates are important so I have a lot of them written down. I have probably listed in my address book the birthdays, and anniversaries of all my friends and family, their spouses and children. I think this is some disorder of my love of genealogy spilling over into everyday life. I used to be fantastic at recognizing birthdays and anniversaries. I truly love my friends to know that I'm thinking of them, on their birthday of course, to celebrate that they are alive and still in my life. But for some reason over the past handful of years I can't seem to get a darn birthday card in the mail and sometimes succeed at e-mailing a quick birthday note. But hey, I know the date. Seriously, if you want to know someone's birth date I've probably got it. In a lot of ways this can be totally useless information. I mean really, unless they are your closest friends are you actually going to send birthday cards for everyone in the family? Yeah right. It's possible that this could be diagnosed as OCD. My plan for combatting this is just simple phone calls to close friends and family.

And there you have just a small insight into the workings of my life!

Like mother like daughter.....

All mother's have what we call "mommy pay-days", well actually it's not always a whole day but they seem to be "mommy pay-moments". Both of my kids are very snuggly affectionate children. They love hugs, snuggling under the blankets, and sitting in our laps to read books. Each day when Daria gets up she comes down stairs and in her sleepy eyed state says "I need a pick up hug". That is when I pick her up and hug her. She loves this (I'm not quite sure what I'll do if she grows any taller because it's hard to pick her up even now). Lately, every day she will say "you are the best mommy in the whole world". No matter how bad my day is or how challenging the kids are those little words will carry me through. Last Thursday morning I made her lunch. Usually she makes it herself the night before. While I was making it and she was busily getting breakfast ready she said "I'm sorry you have to make my lunch.". I told her it was no big deal, I'm her mom, that's one thing that we do for our kids. Then she said "I just don't want you to have to do everything.". Oh, she knows not what she says!!!! I thought it was cute and just took it for what it was. It's amazing to me how little girls can be so caring at one moment and then attack you later, but overall Daria is such a loving caring child.

It got me to thinking how funny it is to be a parent. You have these little kids and when they are babies you imagine all sorts of things, like what they will be like, who they will be like, what they will like. You go through stages where they look like you and then they don't, or you think your child is some amazing prodigy because they can ride their bike before anyone else on the block. But I must say that regardless of all the ideas I've had for my kids or when I've tried to peg them as this or that type of personality, it's one of the funnest things as a mother to see these little individual characters begin to bloom and grow.

In a lot of ways Daria and I are a lot alike. This of course can be good and scary. For instance, we both love horses. We eat, breath, dream, horses. (I've just learned how to contain this passion as an adult). Daria comes home every day with stacks of horses she has drawn. I can relate, in fact my filing cabinet can relate as it houses piles of drawings from when I was a little girl. It's amazing I even finished school because any piece of paper I could get my hands on had horses drawn on it, including homework!

We are both routine oriented beings. This is Daria's morning schedule. She gets herself up with her own alarm clock. Gets dressed, flushes the toilet, comes down for the pick up hug, eats breakfast, practices piano for 30 minutes, puts her shoes on and is ready to catch the bus. It's so predictable. I'm an extreme routine person who actually tries to throw a wrench in the schedule now and then just to stretch myself and jump out of the box to see if I can handle things outside of the schedule. It's painful, but something I must do.

We are both serious, almost to serious. We can laugh at funny people, laugh at jokes, but when it comes to actually being funny, we have no clue how to do that, and even some jokes are not funny to us. Dustin and Ken, who are the natural humorists in our family are often met with blank stares from Daria and I when they think they are funny. You can imagine a mom and daughter with hands on their hips saying "that's not funny!". Why? because life is just soooo serious!!! I've tried to be more funny but it just doesn't work. Daria tries to be funny and I laugh at her jokes just so she can think she is funny. Ken and Dustin think we are to serious and we think they are not serious enough. Someones got to be serious in this house!! it might as well be the women.

We are both perfectionists. Enough said there. That can be a blessing or a curse depending on where you are at in life. Where I'm at in life is trying to teach Daria that whole principle.

Music: we both love music. My love for music is probably a little different than hers. I've always been a music listener. I remember being quite young and having my own radio. Music was always my way to escape. Both of my parents are music people. We always had music on car trips. My mom played the guitar, piano, and harmonica, my dad played the flute and guitar, my sister played the piano and guitar. My brother loves music to and even tried taking up the banjo at one time. I did play clarinet in 7th grade. I took piano lessons for a mili-second and guitar lessons for about the same time but I never had motivation to practice, I just wanted to be good right away. Still, I am so moved by music, all kinds. Now in my adult hood I'm actually taking lessons because I really want to and love learning to play. Daria loves music I think for different reasons. It really is a bug in her soul. She loves all kinds but I've noticed that most of the songs she likes I like as well, so we are similar in that. Daria likes to sing and dance to music, moving classical or instrumental songs. She also loves about every primary song or hymn there is out there. It has actually been fun to take lessons together. This last December we performed a duet together "Carol of the Bells". We made a pact that we would not be mad at each other if we messed up (this was more for me because Daria almost never messes up, but I get so nervous I forget what I'm supposed to play).

Then there are those differences, which are hilarious.

French Fries: Daria loves crunchy french fries. I hate them, I like the fries that are cooked but subtly soft. We make a good pair, when we eat fries we dig through them and trade the hard and crunchy ones.

Bacon: I love crispy bacon, Daria hates it, she can't stand stuff that is to crispy. Again, it makes for a good meal when we can swap.

Chocolate Chips: OK, just for the record, I LOVE CHOCOLATE CHIPS, but i just don't eat them. I'm a sworn chocoholic who refuses to fall off the wagon. This has turned out to be a benefit to Daria who loves chocolate chips but when eating a chocolate chip cookie all she really wants is the chips, I like the nice dough around it. So I'm sure you can imagine the mess we make when we tear these cookies apart and swap the chips for the cooked dough.

Socks: Maybe it's from growing up in Colorado, but I like my feet to be cozy all the time. If it's chilly at all I want socks on my feet. Daria, will come in from a ice cold day, throw her coat on the ground and tear her socks off her feet. It can even be cold in the house. This drives me insane because I think if I can't be comfortable without wearing socks than who else can be. So I'm always trying to get her to wear socks but her reply is always "mom, I'm hot natured".

Pack Rat: Ok, I know I've talked a lot about my de-junking, but any of you who've seen my house know I don't have THAT much stuff. I'm not a collector really, well maybe of scrapbook supplies. Daria she is a collector. Her room is tidy, just like I would keep it, but she has so many nick knacks it drives me crazy, but I let her have them since it's her room. Our biggest difference is containers. I only like containers if they are going to help me organize. Daria can make a container out of anything and will stuff miscellaneous things in it and hide it in the most unusual places. So she's actually a stuffer, she stuffs stuff under toys in purses, boxes, crates, tins, even her backpack. To her they are part of some creative idea. I've opened these containers up before and found things like scraps of torn paper, a bead, maybe even a Barbie shoe. Hello!!! how can Barbie wear her shoes if her shoes are stuffed all around the bedroom in Little containers. Daria and I have cleaning sessions once every 3 months or so. She knows how to purge but has no desire.

At any rate, it really is a blessing to watch my children grow and just marvel at what makes them tick. I know that when my kids grow older these little things will be some of my favorite things I will miss. I hope that when Daria is a grown woman we can still sit down together and divvy up the chocolate chips and dough.

Frustration Saga #2

Why do computers rule our world? Why can't they all work the same?

So here is the scenario, we have two computers. They sit right next to each other on two adjoining desks. As I was immersed in trying to figure out the banner on my blog, my computer's connection became slower than when I had a dial up at 28k, like over 10 years ago! So I moved over to the other computer and it's lightening fast! HHMMMM let's see what could be the problem??? Two computers hooked up to fiber run directly to the house, both run the same platform, the same antivirus, the same network connection, the same hub. AAAGGHHHHHH!!! how in the world can one be faster than the other.

I think I better call it a night, or in about 6 minutes a day.

Frustrated Saga #1

It is now 11:33pm, an hour and a half I've been working on trying to figure out how to change my banner to this blog. It took me all but a few minutes to make the banner, you can see it on this page in the previous post. It's not supposed to be there. It should be at the top of the page.

I like to think of myself as sufficiently computer literate, accept when it comes to html. I played around with the coding and actually got the banner on top but you could only see half of it. Not good, and more irritating than anything. With all the nifty tricks that computers can do, why can't I just drag and drop the picture on the page or copy and paste. Wouldn't that be so much easier than trying to find a string of code that you replace??? I think whoever wrote HTML made it difficult just to bother us non-official techie persons. I suppose I'll wait until Ken can help me as he is of course one of those computer "geeks" who can read the worlds second language of computer code.

Check back in a day or so and MAYBE the banner will be in the right place.

Time Management

Dustin... Oops! I mean even Spiderman must take off his mask to eat.

The kids are in bed, Ken is at a meeting and the house is quiet. These moments always send me into an anxious frenzied sate as I hurriedly think of what I want to do with this uninterrupted "me" time. Especially since I have one hour to do it in. One hour because I promised myself that I would try to be in bed by 10pm each night. This of course is a grand mysterious goal that rarely pans out because I end up enjoying whatever I choose to do and then I stay up way to late and pay for it the next day. But it's the new year, I've been good about trying to get some rest this week (notice it's only Tuesday).

The list of things I want to do is way to long as I'm sure any married mother gal knows. So I sat down and said to myself "tonight I'm going to figure out how to post galleries to my blog" but FIRST I have to read my friend Becky's log. Always my mistake. After I read her blog then I want to blog, then I spend a lot of time blogging or reading blogs, then I think how fun and funny it is to blog, and why in the world are we blogging when we could be talking on the phone? Of course any mother can answer that one, because this is the only time we can actually gather our discombobulated thoughts without any distraction from the small footed person's in the house. By the time I do this I look at the clock and it's usually close to 10pm. Right now it's 9:30p so I'm thinking I still might have a few minutes to figure out the galleries. This of course is probably not that hard and I would most likely figure it out by 9:45pm but then spend the next several hours picking and choosing pictures to place in the galleries, because it's a high probability that if I go to sleep without using my new found tools on the computer, that the next day I would have forgotten and had to start all over. So for now, no new pictures.

On top of that I've been tagged by Becky, so I owe a response. We'll see if I can do that tonight.

Before I do that I have to share just another glimpse of the side of Dustin that just cracks me up. He is such an imaginative boy who has the funniest way of expressing his feelings or frustrations. He was unfortunate enough to get his hand partially smooshed in the door of our van today. No broken bones, just a sore hand. All the way home he had to talk about it. This is his way of working things out. The only problem is it gets OLD so quickly. But he wants to make sure we REALLY understand what has happened to him and why it's such a bum deal. So he's talking and he says "This is the second time my hand has got slammed in a door, one time when I went into the garage with daddy and I slammed my hand, and then just now in the car door and the person told us the car door would not do that (we have those sensors on the doors), and now BOTH MY HANDS HAVE BEEN SLAMMED". I couldn't help but laugh, in fact I have no idea why it's so funny to hear the word's "both my hands have been slammed" but it was all I could do to not laugh. Laughing when Dustin is expressing his soap box of frustrations creates boychild meltdowns. So I was able to contain myself. When we got home I checked the hand again - remember he was fine enough on the way home to talk all about it - but when we got home and no one was paying attention to his sore hand he immediately transformed into the other Dustin we know, moaning and groaning and pretending he couldn't use his hand. To this I had to ignore because I could see it was a ploy, although silently that mother thought comes to mind "what if it's really hurt???", but flash backs of the burned hand from the roasted hot dog and cactus pines entered my mind and I just smiled and started dinner.

More on idiosyncrasies tomorrow.........

Transitions

Life is full of transitions. I can hear my dad now "Karie, what's one thing you can always count on?" and then he would say "change". This has proved to be true. The cool thing about getting older, in my opinion is that as we go through changes we can get so much more out of it personally than when we were younger.

For the past two years I served as the President of the Young Women's organization at church (for those of my family/friends who don't know what that is, it's our youth program for girls who are 12-18) This has always been one of my favorite places to serve, one of the hardest places to serve, one of the most rewarding and always one of the hardest callings for me to leave. It's so cool to be involved with such awesome groups of girls. I suppose getting to do all sorts of fun things with youth makes me feel young, and top that off with the spiritual experiences. Many of my friends have served in the same capacity so I know you know what I mean. I still have such great relationships with some of the girls who I served with when I was in Temple, TX, now that they are on their own, graduated from college, starting families of their own. It's nice to know that all that worrying paid up.

So, I admit I've been such a baby about the whole thing. It's kind of a bitter sweet. The bitter is I will definitely miss being with the girls so much, and I definitely will miss hanging out with Ramona, Kris, and Monica (that was the rest of the Presidency). The sweet, well - it's like this. I sat down to put my January calendar together, something I just couldn't' live without in that calling. It took me all but 2 minutes to make some pretty graphics at the top because there was absolutely nothing to put on it!!! WOW! it felt so weird. No Wednesday night activities, no service projects, no volley ball games to attend, no Stake dances, no firesides, nadda, zippo, none!

Why am I writing about this? as I know most of you have been there done that. Well, I write about this because I am just totally amazed at how cool the Gospel is. I totally love how the Lord takes us through so many different opportunities, to help us grow, humble us, teach us, help us to learn to love others, build friendships on the way, and even experience some sadness so we can experience the joy. I really am so grateful that we get to do this and I remember when things were hard my counselors and I would chuckle about how we know the church is true, because who in their right mind would volunteer to do something like this if it weren't!!! I'm sure most people think we are crazy for doing all that we do in the Church for free, but I love it!! It makes me so thankful to be a part of the big picture. I suppose the Lord asks us to do this so we can always be serving and helping others. So I looked back and realized I've liked every calling I've ever had. I think I had challenges with each of them but learned something valuable each time. I've always been so blessed to serve with people who our paths didn't normally cross because of conflicting schedules, but when you get to serve with each other you gain such awesome friends and associates.

Then there are the funny memories, more than I could list here. For those of you reading this who I've served with I"m sure you can think of some funny things that happened!

Now I am teaching the boys and girls who are 10 turning 11 this year. Mostly boys and 1 super sweet girl. I think they are cool and it's nice to be able to focus on 7 individual kids. I'm not sure they think I'll do as a teacher yet or not, but I think they are cool. Kids just crack me up. They really think you have no clue but I've got them figured out already.

For now I'm going to enjoy my lighter schedule, and I'll enjoy being in Primary. I'm sure glad I had the opportunity to serve in Young Women's the past few years. Later on when I'm released from Primary I'll get to sit back and look at all the cool experiences that happened there to!!!!

De-junking

It's the beginning of a new year and I got the de-junking stuff bug. I started upstairs, which is only logical. That's where the kids rooms are, and kids rooms seem to attract the most junk "stuff". I've gone inch by inch, corner by corner, closet by closet and room by room.

I'm taking advantage of the fact that I'm not feeling very sentimental and my logic has set in which sure helps sort out what needs to stay and what doesn't. Everything that is not staying I've conveniently thrown in the upstairs spare bedroom. If we have any unannounced guests, they will have to stay on the couch. It is impossible to even walk in the spare bedroom. AHHHH but it feels good to be getting rid of unused "stuff".

I realized I like to clean. Not the wash the floors, clean the bathrooms type of clean. But the organize, streamline type of cleaning. Only because it feels so good afterwords. Everything that stays is useful, needed and not cluttered. I have a long way to go. Once I'm done I have to tackle the spare bedroom. 3 piles, Goodwill, e-Bay, and Craig's list. This is the biggest challenge for me because once I decide something doesn't' belong on the house I want it gone right away. But I promised Ken I would try to be more resourceful and actually earn some money on some items.

My thoughts as I've done this are discombobulating. For one, WHY in the world do we have this much "stuff?"!! Where does it all come from? I mean really, I don't have that junky of a house but somehow have managed to fill up a bedroom full of "stuff" that is not longer wanted, needed, or useful. I can see now why people tend to rent storage sheds, which has always seemed like a waste of money to me. But if you don't go through your "stuff" every so often, you run out of room to keep your "stuff". So you have to find a place and pay to store your "stuff" which by the way if you are doing that you aren't even using your "stuff" so what's the purpose of having all that "stuff"?

As I sort through things it's really been a remedy for my spending habits. I look at things that I just had to have, or things that I thought I would use (like the frames I bought half off at Hobby Lobby, uh, if anyone has ever seen my walls there are VERY few pictures hung up. A lot of good those frames did).

Another challenge is some of the "stuff" I'm getting rid of, the kids haven't even paid attention to in probably a year, but if you take "stuff" out of it's designated areas and place it in a new area (like a spare bedroom), it becomes so much more interesting than before, and then you have two kids who behave as if they won't survive if you get rid of that "stuff". I'm afraid my kids will have to go to counseling later on in life because "mom was always giving our "stuff" to Goodwill or selling it".

All in all I love the start of a new year! after I finish this project I've got plenty of others to do. Hopefully one of those will be not to acquire more "stuff". Well, maybe just a little of it. :o)