Lame excuse

Well I had these grand plans of posting a neat little video to commemorate our 15th wedding anniversary which was last week. Unfortunately I had technical difficulties making the video. Along with that each day seems to be pretty busy and thus not allowing ample time at the computer to do what I'd like to do. I hate it when that happens.

To celebrate we spent the whole morning at the temple, this has become somewhat of a tradition for us and a perfect one at that. Very simple and a great way to renew the covenants we made with each other. We topped it off with a super awesome meal and a day together. I have to say that I feel so lucky to have been married to Ken for so many years and I look forward to many many more!!!! You rock Ken!

We live on a pretty fun street surrounded by great neighbors and kids. Friday night the "boyz" decided to have a camp out in one of the front yards. It was quite an activity. 3 tents, 7 boys, 3 dogs, and pizza. We women folk, all seven of us, joined in for the pizza, singing around no campfire, and games, then left the boys to their rugged camping ground to pamper ourselves with new fingernail polish and the movie Ever After. I love that movie.

I wonder what the HOA would say about this! Ha!

We stayed up entirely too late, but most everyone was up by 6:00am while Ken and Ino cooked eggs and sausage for breakfast. Who says we need a campground to camp!

Last night Ken and I attended a inter-faith Thanksgiving service that is hosted by a local community ministry that helps 100's of families in the greater city area. This is the first year the LDS church was asked to host it at their building, which is pretty monumental because for years and years the LDS church has helped this ministry out but we've not been invited to the big functions until 3 years ago. It's a pretty big event, consisting of some of the largest congregations here in the area, Catholic, Methodist, Episcopal, and Muslim, and I think maybe Jewish last year?? It was cool to watch all these people of different faiths come together for a cause (helping the poor, homeless, jobless, sick, etc). How the evening turned out was religious leaders from each group would get up, recite a song, poem, or reading from one of their sacred text, and then the congregation would sing a song. One of the other ministers used a song that was in our hymn book stating "because we share the same hymn". Our Stake President represented the LDS church and he read out of the Book of Mormon. Pretty awesome. Then we sang another song out of our hymn book. There was also an interfaith choir hosted by our ward choir, which sang several songs, one of which is my favorite "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", wonderful song. The only song that was not sung by the congregation was one of the Muslim songs which was performed by their children's youth choir because it was in a different language. They did a great job! These kids traveled over an hour to get here. They were so cute. I was glad the Muslim's were there. Their religion is so misrepresented by the media because of a group of fanatics. But you never hear about the good people in that religion. I suppose it bothers me because the same thing happens in our religion at times, where we are judged based off of some break off group or person from the church that completely mis-represents what we believe. After the service EVERYONE mingled in the cultural hall. It was so cool to see all sorts of different people, some in their religious clothing, or cultural clothing mingling, laughing, talking, shaking hands, in our own cultural hall.

The evening was very enjoyable and we will definitely attend next year.

Done

Is it just me or is there anyone else out there who is just dragging their feet on this time change??? I am SOOOOOOO tired.

I'm happy to report that this year I actually finished the costumes the day before Halloween instead of an hour before trick-r-treat time on Halloween day.

I was pleased with the outcome of each outfit but have to admit that I'm most pleased with Dustin's. Out of our family he is the one who loves to dress up the most. Once he is in an outfit he "believes" he is what he is wearing. I was so excited for him. Dustin and Logan were knights. Dustin was a black knight and Logan was a white knight. Real knights. Jenni researched actual armor and she was the mastermind behind the original design. Each piece were actual pieces a knight would have worn, such as pauldrons for the arms, cuisses for the leg, helm for the head, and a cuirass for the body. When I was making Dustin's I ended up staying up until midnight because all of the sudden I got these creative ideas and just didn't want to stop adjusting and manipulating the design. The more I worked on his costume the more excited I was for him to wear it. I thought the boys looked great!


Dustin the "Black Knight"

Logan the "White Knight"


The boys trying out their powers.

The biggest challenge was dressing Dustin. It was a process which would have been much easier for an adult than a 5 year old boy. Having him stand still was almost impossible and he whined the whole time. I reminded him that a "real" knight would have taken much longer to get in his armor so he should count himself lucky. I did however warn him to go to the bathroom before we put it on and if he needed to go later on he would need to give me a lot of notice because there was no way we would get this outfit off quickly.

Kat, Daria, and I went as Renaissance ladies. I have to toot Kat's horn because she sewed her own costume...again. I remember when she was 10 and she sewed her own pioneer dress. Amazing. I don't think there are a lot of 12 year olds who can sew this well. Her dress turned out fabulous! Jenni went as a commoner or peasant lady. Now someone who knows how to sew is Jenni. Ken went as an average man of that era.


Daria as a maiden

Kat and Daria as maidens

All of the girls

My dress turned out well, although it felt HUGE. I was gently reminded that the style back then was intended to have a lot of material and be HUGE. I suppose walking around with 5 yards or more of fabric on your body would make anyone look like a pillow. The model on the front of the pattern did NOT look like she was wearing a comforter or a pillow (darn marketing techniques). The sleeves were a challenge in themselves but I really liked how they turned out.

First we attended the trunk-r-treat up at church. All 7 of us (Ken, Dustin, Daria, Jenni, Kat, Logan, and I) one 1st prize for costumes. That was pretty cool. I admit I felt a little uncomfortable as an adult because I wasn't dressing for the contest. I was dressing up to have fun. I didn't want to steal attention away from the kids since that is who the trunk-r-treat is for. After the trunk-r-treat we came back home, ate tons of pizza with a bunch of friends, then went around the block for more trick-r-treating. All in all it was a very fun evening.


Daddy and Daria ???????

We worked hard on these costumes for two reasons. To dress up for Halloween but more importantly we want to attend the Renaissance Faire, and going in "Renaissance Garb" will be so fun.

Karie and Jenni, I liked our smiles in this picture better

This picture shows the detail on the dresses better

Sounds of Silence

Or maybe it should be the sight of silence. Is it just me or are we entering that time of year where we get so darn busy that we can’t see straight? My lack of blogging has been attributed to the kids, making costumes, and helping put together a huge Super Saturday up at church for the ladies. My calling is Enrichment Leader, one which I’ve never had before but I’m always up for something new. I’ve always enjoyed the “homemaking or enrichment nights” at church and have tried to attend as often as possible. Now after working on a Super Saturday I realize now how much effort and how many people it takes to pull one off.

I’m pleased to say that it went very well. I’m so glad, for two reasons. One because I’ve spent so much time working on it (as well as the other ladies) and two, because women are so busy I felt like if they were going to spend one whole day at church it better be well worth their time. Slight pressure don’t you think??

Amazingly everything went well, not one single problem. We had a fantastic turnout and the ladies seemed to really enjoy themselves. I was glad it happened and I was glad when it was over.

My blog is looking a bit like my journal. Instead of daily small tidbits, it turns out to be one long summary of say, the past month? Well, at least it’s on record.

While driving through a floody street the other night the kids asked me what I would do if the water was deeper. Daria said she would run to the museum, steel the space shuttle and fly to space. Dustin reminded her that she wouldn’t even know which button to push to make it go since there are “100’s of buttons” to push.

I’ve never thought of myself as a “competitive” person. Maybe because I usually equate competitiveness to sports/games and I don’t really play sports. I recognize this is not the only area people can be competitive in. I never like to venture to far out with competitive situations, it’s not my style. Now, maybe competitive can over lap with opinionated, I do think I can be down right opinionated at times and I’m still working on how to come across with my opinion without being abrasive. I’ll let you know when I figure that one out.

I digress… back to being competitive. This month Daria graduated into using the piano books that I am now finishing up. The irony in this is that we both started piano the same year, just about 2 years ago. She started in the beginner kid books I started in the beginner adult books. Can you see the picture I’m painting here? Now we have to share the same books. All of the sudden I felt slightly competitive in that I want to be in a set of books ahead of her, NOT THE SAME BOOKS! Well, like I said, I’m not really competitive as that thought lingered only for a short time and then I just realized that I think it’s pretty darn cool how Daria excels at piano. She’s very good at it, in fact if she cared at all about her timing she would be super amazing, right now she’s just amazing :o)

I made my sometimes monthly pilgrimage to the salon today to pay homage to the beauty industry for helping me not look older than I am. My favorite part about going to the salon is getting my hair washed. They always take a long time and give a fabulous head massage. Just think how happy people would be if we could all start out with one great head massage.

Now back to finishing costumes…….(it’s fun, really I am enjoying it)

I'm Back

The truck is back home. Life is back to normal again (whatever normal means). Ken’s truck looks almost… brand new, well the front end that is. I can’t complain, I’m very grateful to have insurance. Ken is just grateful to have his old faithful back.

Daria started choir this week. I’m excited for Daria but inside I’m kicking and screaming all the way as I know this is the beginning of the never ending schedule nightmare. I’m such a sucker for wanting my schedule to be so “controllable”. I will miss our morning walks with the other ladies since we need to be at school by 8am instead of 8:40am. We walked by ourselves the three days that Daria had choir. Then I just sat and waited for the other ladies to arrive and then we walked back home together.

As I was vacuuming under the couch today I had this funny little thought of how I really enjoy cleaning under the couch. It’s fun to find lost treasures. So far in my house those treasures are not food or trash, but usually some lost Lego piece or some part of a toy that we’ve searched high and low for. Today I found some letters that go to the Leap Frog letter factory. This is a good thing because I just can’t stand having only portions of a toy or game.

Since Lori and I never arrived to our visiting teaching appointment last week due to some unfortunate events, on Friday Ken and I (along with a few other friends) were able to help Cinamon move out of her apartment. She lived in a quant 1930’s building downtown. I love those old buildings. They have so much character. We moved all day, from 9a until 2pm, then we went back again on Saturday 8a – 1pm. The trash we left on the corner for pickup. Unfortunately the large trash pick up only happens once a month, and that once a month wasn’t this week, so the landlord said get it off or be fined. So 8pm on Sunday Ken, Jaron, Chris, and Tim drove back down to load the trash back up and bring it up here. I love our trash people. It was trash pickup today and they picked up every single bit of it. Cinamon is a pretty cool lady and I’m totally enjoying getting to know her.

25 days and counting. I’m not sure how this happens, but Jenni and I chose our Halloween costumes in August with grand plans of having them sewn WAY before October. For some strange reason neither of us has made any progress. I have cut out the material and patterns, remember, that was the day I set Ken’s laptop on the sub woofer. But not one stitch of material has been sewn together. This procrastination happens every year. Now that we are down to the wire again, we have had to look at our calendars and actually schedule in sewing time. Wish us luck.

We had some friends in town this week. David and Michele, and their 3 kids. We met years ago when Ken and I were first married, but they moved off shortly after. Michelle and I actually used to be visiting teachers together. We’ve kept in contact all these years and it was good to find that it was as if no time had passed as we got together. Even our kids had a blast playing with each other for the first time. Daria and Kimberly hit it off right away and have promised to write each other letters (a lost art!!!)

David is a Nikon instructor which turned out to be beneficial for me since I love my Nikon. I got some hands on training and tips and even a chance to try out his $1800.00 lens. If only I could justify that!

Ok, here are some funny questions from Dustin:

“Mom, how do we know there really is a God” (realizing that as cute of a comment as this is I found it a perfect teaching opportunity to encourage Dustin to pray about it. We talked about other people who have seen God – people in the scriptures, Joseph Smith, etc, but Dustin will have to find out for himself).

“Mom, how do we find the person we’re supposed to marry?” (Ok, can someone just slap me? Dustin is only 5, can’t he ask me five year old questions like why are their so many colors of crayons?? LOL! Actually his deep questions don’t bother me, they just surprise me as I’m sure all of your kids do to when they ask various things.)

“Mom!!! Why did you make my lunch?!! I wanted to make it!!!” (Dustin starting school has created such a phenomenon in our house. It irritates him when he doesn’t get to make the lunches. So I gladly let him the next night. He successfully made a lunch of himself and Daria).

Thoughts from Daria”

“Mom!!! You interrupted me again!!” (While I was trying to help her with her timing during piano practice)

“Mom, will you sign this” (while I’m talking on the phone of course signing something can never wait until AFTER I’m off the phone)

Actually I had parent teacher conferences with both Daria and Dustin’s teachers. Daria is doing great, her teachers are very nice and they said Daria is a very polite, helpful, student. Daria does love school and I like that about her. She loves to learn (she just doesn’t love to practice). She LOVES choir. I can’t wait to hear the choir sing for the first time. It’s so exciting to watch her dabble in her own interests.

Dustin is doing great. The teacher’s exact words were “He’s bored”. I figured that would happen, especially since he’s learning stuff I taught him two years ago. Fortunately his teacher is smart enough to provide him with other learning and challenge opportunities, and Dustin loves school so it doesn’t seem to faze him that he’s already learned this stuff.

Tomorrow is the second day of General Conference. We’ve got some people coming over to watch it with us and Ken is trying a Turkey on the “Green Egg”. I’ll be thinking of all of you as I sink my teeth in to some mouth watering flavorful turkey!

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days which is a lot like living the movie "Tale of Unfortunate Events?" I'm sure all of you have, and true to the pattern of life we all must experience the unfortunate events.

The only problem is sometimes those events are just so lame that we are left wondering and wishing we could just turn back time... just a little, like say 24 hours!

It started yesterday when I set out to cut out material. Ken's lap top was sitting on the floor near his chair where it always sits. Not wanting to step on it I moved it. Looking around for the most logical place to set it I choose the sub woofer that sits behind the chair. To me it's just another piece of furniture. Note to self: NEVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER place a laptop on a sub woofer or speaker. Why??? Well, if you are a woman, most likely you would not know why. If you are a man you will, because most men come into this world somehow already knowing about things such as engines, electricity, and speakers. There is this phenomenon about placing a laptop on a speaker. Underneath all that pretty fake wood over the speaker lurks a magnet the size of your dinner plate. Magnets and laptops do not mix. In fact magnets like to mix up a laptop. After sitting on a speaker for about 8 hours, Ken's laptop entered the realm of laptop heaven, gone, zippo, dead, unusable, has ta la vista baby. In layman's terms: magnets will erase anything and everything usable on a laptop, the memory, motherboard, operating system, the whole shebang. It will not even turn on.

I felt sick to my stomach when I realized what happened. The only redeeming thing of this whole story is how Ken handled it. VERY VERY patiently, lovingly and with forgiveness. I know the horrors of loosing data. The only thing Ken said calmly and quietly was "haven't you ever taken a part a speaker?" Uh, no I thought, I don't think that was offered in Home Ec. class (Of course NOW I want to take our speaker apart just to see the evil magnet). The picture above is of a sub woofer that is see through, OURS is not see through. Ours looks like a box of nice wood. Maybe if I could see in the speaker I would have noticed the huge magnet. Seriously though, Ken was so kind about it even though I knew he must have been wanting to pull out whatever is left of his hair.

It gets worse. I think we were both more worried about what was lost from the laptop, that we didn't even think about the fact that Ken is on call this week. We were reminded of this at 1am in the morning when he got a call from work. Normally this would require dialing in on the special software on the laptop to fix the problem. UNFORTUNATELY this time, with Mr. Dead laptop, Ken had to drive in to work a nice 26 miles one way in the middle of the morning, just to find out it wasn't his problem but another groups problem. I was already feeling small, real real small. By morning I was feeling almost invisible. It was like that airplane commerical "wanna get away?" Ken did not complain. He is amazing.

So this morning my visiting teaching companion and I headed out first thing to help a lady we teach pack up her belongings. The unfortunate events continued on. We never did get to help her pack because somewhere between here and there I got in a auto accident with none other than Ken's truck. FORTUNATELY no one was hurt. The other driver was able to drive away. Ken's truck was not able to drive away. FORTUNATELY we were near Ken's work. UNFORTUNATE that I was already feeling lousy about destroying his laptop, now I had to call him and tell him I crunched his truck. Because he takes the bus to work he had no vehicle so borrowed a co-workers and came to our location. UNFORTUNATELY we had a officer in training, so 2 1/2 hours later we finally got to leave. FORTUNATELY a friend drove 26 miles to come pick us up, Ken included, as he now had to take the rest of the day off to get a rental car and deal with the details. The truck was towed to a repair shop. If we are fortunate it will be repairable. If not, well, I am always telling the kids to not worry about the "what ifs" so I'm going to try and "not worry". We are fortunate to have insurance and I am now unfortunate to not have a clean driving record.

So to say the least, my day was less than desirable, although I continue to remind myself of the blessings, like no one was hurt, it was near Ken's work, he was able to help, our friend was able to pick us up, we were able to get a rental car, the tow truck guy was very nice and gave us some helpful tips. By the time I got home I felt like crawling under a rock. Again, amazingly Ken was very calm, loving and helpful. I don't know how he does it, I'm sure I would be on the war path if the shoe was on the other foot. I'm so glad he balances things out and is willing to "forgive".

I can't wait for tomorrow....another day...I hope it's better. :o)

How fast can you make macaroni and cheese?

Well, I’ll tell you how fast at the end of my post.

This school year is just as good as any and seems to continually provide learning opportunities for me as a parent and for my kids.

I learned a very interesting and valuable lesson last week. Let me explain. I always believed that a lot of my “struggles” and “baggage” stemmed from my parents divorce. I believed that I wouldn’t have had to deal with emotional struggles had they not been divorced. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s not a child in this world who will come out of a divorced situation without extra baggage and the cycle of its effects. Even in the most solid of families we will come out with strengths and weaknesses.

Let me continue…

Here’s the first story. Daria is doing fine academically in school and even emotionally she seems to be evening out. As I mentioned previously, the first few weeks of school Daria was one big ball of emotions. She worried that the bus would take her to the wrong place, or drop her off at the wrong place. What if I didn’t pick her up? What if I didn’t meet her for lunch? What if she forgets what the teacher says? The list goes on. Here is the lesson I learned. I thought that in order to have those behaviors one would have had to have experienced situations that reinforced that worry. The bus has never taken Daria to the wrong place. The bus has always dropped her off at the right place. I’ve never missed picking her up, nor have I ever not come to lunch when I said I would. So why was she worrying about this?

Here’s the second story. As a child I worried about everything. I worried that others knew something I didn’t know. I worried about what others were feeling, thinking and doing. I worried about being left behind, forgotten, abandoned (rightfully so as all three of those are effects of children in divorce). I grew up with those feelings along with a lot of “unpredictability”. Add to that negative experiences thus reinforcing my fears. Unpredictability, equaled “pain, fear, loneliness”. There was a lot to worry about in a family that was rocked by divorce. What you knew no longer existed, unknowns, lack of a stable foundation. I could not control my situation so I clamped down hard on the things I could control. I would not try new things because doing so would require one to face the “unpredictable outcome”. One would rather choose the pain of predictable because you knew what to expect while making any changes would be “unpredictable” which was a much worse.

With that said, I found myself perplexed and analyzing this behavior in Daria. She has a very stable predictable family, school, and church environment. So far in her short life Ken and I have never left her behind, abandoned her, or forgotten about her. We validate her feelings and have good communication. Her day to day routines are pretty predictable. So why all the worry from Daria??

Then for the first time ever I realized something HUGE. Our personalities come pre-packaged. Those personalities have strengths and weaknesses. Both of which can be exaggerated and blown out of proportion under certain negative or positive circumstances. Here I was feeling so guilty trying to figure out what I had done to Daria to make her a worrier. But it wasn’t me, it’s just who she is. I believe she has natural tendencies to worry, and I also think this is a normal stage for most children her age. Put that together and you get a huge explosion of extra worry.

I had never before thought that I came pre-packaged with a worrisome personality, fear of failure, and need to control my surroundings. I recognize now that I came with an “A” type personality and unfortunately the circumstances of divorce affected my personality traits in a negative way. This would explain why my siblings and I all came out of it with different repercussions. Our personalities, strengths and weaknesses were different and effected differently. The downside to this knowledge is the realization that one cannot blame their parents forever because part of who we are is who we are and the other part is the outcome of our parents actions. Not to justify any divorce or negative parenting of course, but this realization almost made me laugh out loud. All these years the things I didn’t like about myself I thought were the outcome of my parent’s decisions. Now I know that their decisions just affected my personality the way it did. Now I realize that well, unfortunately we are all born with some personality traits that we’re not to fond of. Mix in any challenges from an imperfect human family and wow! Look what you get!

Now the positive side of what I learned is that fortunately for Daria she does have a stable childhood. So with these personality traits that she has I know that I can work with her and teach her coping skills, thinking patterns, and tools for overcoming. For me this is a more desirable situation than trying to re-train a child who has been traumatized by things out of their control.

So with all of that said, let me get back to my macaroni story. On Friday I had committed to go to lunch with both kids. Dustin has lunch at 10:30am. I usually just sit with him since I’m so not ready for lunch at 10:30 in the morning. Daria’s lunch is at 12:15pm. Today she wanted me to bring macaroni and cheese. At home I was quickly working on some projects, steadily keeping my eye on the time. Then my sister called and we talked and talked and talked. I didn’t think a thing of it. I kept looking at the time. About 12:03 I began to think I should wrap the conversation up so I could head to school. Then in about a mili-second later as I’m still on the phone walking down stairs I spot the box of macaroni on the counter. I had strategically placed it on the counter to remind me to make it for her. Panic struck! I’m supposed to be at the school at 12:15! Do I make the mac & cheese and arrive late? Or do I just go and say I forgot to make the mac & cheese and buy her lunch there? Oh the anxiety!!!! Why? Because it almost seemed like Daria’s worry actually coming to reality. WHAT IF I’M LATE???? Then she will confirm in her head that it’s ok to worry about mom missing her lunch!!!!! AAAAHHHHHH.

Well, I will tell you that the box of mac& cheese says you can cook it for 5-9 minutes. That is of course if your water is already boiling. I decided that I needed to show up on time with the mac&cheese because I didn’t want to slide on either commitment. I said a quick prayer and I think that water boiled faster than any water I’ve ever seen boil. I tried not to stare at it because everyone knows that if you stare at water it won’t boil fast (LOL). About 12:13 I threw the mac&cheese, grapes and some dogs in a bag and flew out the door. Unlucky for me the parking lot was full. I parked on the street and ran. Funny that as I was running through the parking lot I pass my good friend Jenni who was also going to lunch with her son. She wasn’t in a hurry. I was on a mission to prove my daughters fears wrong! Fortunately my badge from my earlier lunch with Dustin was already printed out and waiting for me, so I grabbed it and headed to the cafeteria. Daria’s class had already arrived and she was sitting staring at the door with anxious eyes. I do believe she had faith that I would come. I did not say a word about my dilemma, but I did warn her that she needed to be careful, the mac&cheese was VERY hot. She opened up the bowl and all this steam came billowing out. I think it was still cooking. She told me later that she wondered just a little bit if I was coming. I told her she should always give me about 5 minutes, depending on finding a parking space, how many other people are in line waiting to get their badges. These are all possibilities. I left content that everything worked out fine. If we hadn’t gone through this huge worry stage lately I may not have reacted so dramatic about it, but I was NOT going to let her fears be re-enforced.

Anyway, even though times like this can be stressful, they are some of my favorite times because I end up learning so much about myself that I never knew before.

Oh the saga of motherhood! You’ve got to love it!

Nothin' to blog

I really don't have anything to blog about. No funny stories from the kids, no exciting adventures, no strange encounters. Life is.. well, quite normal. A good friend of mine mentioned that sometimes reading blogs makes it look like we have these exciting lives. I think we all do in a way, but the blog is just a accumulation of experiences and events. But the majority of the time, life is just as mundane as the next family. Up early, breakfast, backpacks, piano practice, walk to school, cleaning, errands, projects, cooking, helping kids with homework, showers and baths, bed time scripture reading, playing, complaints. I think we can all relate. Still, I love to blog and I'm VERY dutiful about checking all of my friends blogs everyday, and sometimes twice a day just to see if they posted. It's quite an addiction. I always look forward to reading about each of your lives and the day to day musings of being a parent, mother, friend, sister, daughter. It gives me the boost I need sometimes.

I read a book one time about how women are relationship beings. In our day and age we can find ourselves so busy that we tend to have more acquaintances than close friends because we don't have the time to nurture them (rightfully so, our time in life right now has many priorities). I realized that for me, my friends blogs have become a great way to get back in touch with my closest friends (who if I lived near them, would be going to lunch!), when there is no time for a phone call or e-mail.

So with that said, thank you for your blogs where you share your life, family, and thoughts.

Here is a cute video that I think each of us could totally appreciate. It just sums it all up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISuvTiTYJA