Home Improved!

It took us a bit longer than we had planned but our laundry room remodel is more or less done! Those final odds and ends seemed to really add up with this project. We are very happy with how this turned out. Hopefully we're done with major home projects now.
This shot was taken in pretty much the same spot as the one I posted in November.

Tagged

My friend Jen has tagged me to write six facts/habits about myself and then tag six other people. It's kind of hard for me to think of six interesting things about myself that are current. (I've traveled the world and done many interesting things but that was all many years ago!)

But here I go:

1-I am a recovering country music addict. I listened to country music pretty much exclusively during college but now it kind of makes me crazy. I can't stand the annoying twang and heartfelt ballads about trucks.

2-I love to sing. I used to sing all the time but then got caught up in my mommy life and my singing moments were pretty much limited to hymns in church on Sunday. But in the past year I have kind of rekindled my joy of singing just a little bit. I volunteered to sing a solo in church (I believe that every so often you need to do something that scares you to death!), I've done several duets with a friend of mine (including singing at the funeral for a person I had never met), and I sing at home with my kids a lot more than I used to.

3-I am addicted to checking my email. I think I come down to my computer and check my email no fewer than ten times a day. It started last year when email was pretty much the only communication I had with my husband. But even now that he is back I still obsessively check my email throughout the day.

4-I love to cook. I love trying new recipes or experimenting with familiar ones. I don't like using ready made processed foods and mixes--I like to do things from scratch. I almost never use "cream of ______" soup in anything. Recently I have been trying to prepare more healthy foods and have been on a campaign to cut out high fructose corn syrup and MSG from our diet. I am much more inclined to use natural and organic foods these days. Thank goodness there is now a Good Earth store in my town!

5-I like to read but don't generally read novels. I like self-help books (I tend to need a lot of help!) and books about health. I faithfully read the news every morning (including the obituaries) and enjoy reading magazines.

6-I like to watch reruns of my favorite TV shows. I think I've seen every episode of Friends, Seinfeld and Scrubs. (But now that I think about it, I probably just watch these shows over and over because I don't have cable!)



Tag you're it: Emmie F., Annette L., Holly S., Taryn S., Sarah S., Kate S-B.

When your hobbies come back to bite you

Have you ever sat outside near a stream and listened to the relaxing sound of water spilling over rocks and splashing into puddles? That is quite possibly the most tranquil of all sounds.

Now imagine that same sound inside your house, only the water is spilling over a windowsill and splashing on the the carpet. I promise that sound is neither relaxing or tranquil.

Such was my morning yesterday. When I went down to my son's basement bedroom to wake him up for school I heard the alarming, yet undeniable, sound of water trickling in from the window. I could see that the window well outside had filled with several inches of water that was leaking into the house. Apparently the downspout from the roof was clogged and the rain gutter had filled up with water and then froze. So all of the rain that fell yesterday morning (and I guess the water from melting snow as well) had no where to go except out the end of the rain gutter and directly into the window well below it.

Don't you hate it when that happens!!?

As I frantically tried to mop up the mess with every single towel I own, my husband climbed up to inspect the downspout. The problem? A tennis ball.

Evidently one of the kids failed to report loosing a tennis ball on the roof last fall. The ball had rolled into the downspout and completely sealed it off.

All day yesterday I contemplated the irony of it all. I was so delighted by my newfound joy of tennis that I had begun teaching my children how to play. Everyone got new tennis rackets and we spent a few warm fall evenings at the courts as a family. We had a great time just being together. One time I even teared up a little bit as I watched my kids hitting the ball back and forth with their dad. The phrase "wholesome recreational activities" from the Family Proclamation kept coming to mind and I realized that what were were doing was a good thing. I knew that the side effects of playing a sport together--the relationships, the memories, the fun--would be worth all of the effort and hassle it took for us to do it.

So as I listened to my husband scooping bucket after bucket of muddy ice water out of the window well, while I was on my hands and knees sucking up water from a soaked carpet with a wet vac---I realized that this was a side effect of family tennis that I hadn't really bargained for!

To whom it may concern. . .

Today I did the most unfortunate of things. . . I went Christmas shopping at the mall. I can think of no other activity that kills the Christmas spirit quite like going to the mall in December! I went there to buy a dress to give to my daughter. In the first department store I visited I found the perfect purple velvet dress that I knew my little princess would absolutely adore, but it cost exactly twice what I had determined I was willing to pay. So I went to six other stores on what turned out to be a wild goose chase, looking for another "perfect" dress (heck, I would have settled for an "adequate" dress) and found nothing even close. As you probably guessed it, I ended up back at the first store and bought the expensive dress I had looked at hours earlier. I left the mall exhausted and grumpy and fiercely determined not to go back for months.

In the car on the drive home I composed the following letter in my head. This is not a letter I will ever actually send to anyone because I know it would never do any good, but I'm writing it here so that I can vent just a little bit!

Dear Manufacturers, Designers, and Retailers of children's clothing:

I feel it necessary to bring it to your attention that although little girls tend to exhibit an inordinate amount of sass these days, they are, in fact, NOT just short teenagers. Designing a dress for a five-year-old that could only be described as "sexy" is just wrong. Please allow little girls to be little girls. While your bold and crazy prints would be lots of fun on T-shirts, my child has to wear these clothes to church and a color scheme that looks like it is trying to recreate the view inside a kaleidescope is just not appropriate. Likewise, silky, clingy, skanky fabrics are just not suitable for items intended for young children. What ever happened to cotton? Oh, and sleeves would be nice. And no--covering up a sleeveless dress with a cheap little jacket thingy is not the same thing!

And while I'm at it, let me also inform you that my child has no desire to be a billboard. Must you plaster Dora, Tinkerbell and every other children's icon on all of your clothing? Is it too much to ask for plain fabric or a simple floral print once in a while? My kids are bombarded by commercialism enough as it is, they don't need to be constantly reminded of the most popular toys, TV programs or movies every time they look at their own pajamas.

Please consider putting the "kid" back in kids' clothing. Otherwise, I will be forced to learn how to sew. And I assure you, no one wants that.

Thank you.

Christmas Advent

The other evening my kids were watching a Christmas cartoon on TV and someone in the show made the comment "That's not what Christmas is all about." To which my four-year-old responded, "Yeah, we know what Christmas is all about. . . it's presents."
His reply was a little shocking to me and made me realize that we need to make a concerted effort to refocus my little guy's thinking about the holiday season.

So I made a scripture advent activity for our family to do this year. Each morning we'll read a passage of scripture dealing with the "real meaning of Christmas" and add a tiny ornament to a little advent tree. Hopefully this year my kids can understand what this is really all about. . . or at least think about it for a small moment!

Anyway, it took me some time to put it all together, so I thought I'd share.

December 1 Micah 5:2
December 2 Moses 5:57
December 3 John 1:14
December 4 Alma 5:50
December 5 John 3:16-17
December 6 1 Nephi 10:4
December 7 Alma 9:26-27
December 8 Isaiah 40:3-5
December 9 Helaman 14:3
December 10 1 Nephi 11:20-24
December 11 Isaiah 7:14
December 12 Luke 1:30-31
December 13 Alma 7:9-10
December 14 Matthew 1:18-23
December 15 Isaiah 9:6
December 16 Luke 1:26-38
December 17 3 Nephi 1:19
December 18 Luke 2:4-7
December 19 Luke 2:8-11
December 20 Luke 2:12-14
December 21 Matthew 2:1-2
December 22 Matthew 2:9-11
December 23 Mosiah 3:5-8
December 24 3 Nephi 1:13
December 25 Luke 2:1-20


Happy Christmas one and all!!

Fact or Fiction part II

OK. I guess I was kind of tricky and my falsehood is actually more of a half truth.

Here's the full story on each of my statements.

1. I was born right on my due date and weighed almost 10 pounds. TRUE
I was born on my due date and weighed in at 9 lbs. 15 oz. My mom once told me that I looked like I was three months old the day I was born. (When I was pregnant with my first child I read somewhere that mothers who were big babies themselves tend to have big babies. I was honestly terrified to give birth. None of my kids have been as big as I was, although my daughter weighed in at 8 lbs. 7 oz. and she was induced 10 days early so the potential is definitely there!)

2. Although I am the daughter of a beekeeper and was raised on a honey farm, I am deathly allergic to all stinging insects. FALSE! (or rather a half truth)
The truth is, I am only allergic to honey bees--not ALL stinging insects. A honey bee sting could send me into anaphylactic shock but a hornet sting has absolutely no effect on me. Which I have always found to be very ironic. I think it has something to do with the fact that I was stung by honey bees often as a child--although no more (and probably less!) than my siblings, so I don't know why I developed an allergy when no one else did. My brothers would often claim that my allergy was suspiciously "convenient" because it got me out of a lot of work as a kid.

3. I was once the star of a Korean radio show. TRUE
I was the on-air English consultant on a late night radio show called "Evening at Pops." Where I would loosely translate American pop songs and use a phrase from the song to teach something about English. For example, I once did the song El Condor Pasa by Simon and Garfunkle that has all those lines about "I'd rather be a ______ than a ______." Then we talked about using the phrase "rather than" properly in a sentence. It was probably really lame but I had fun.

4. I don't like sweet breads. TRUE
I am very picky about my baked goods. I'm not a fan of things like banana bread, zucchini bread or raisin bread. I also don't really like muffins, cake donuts or heavy cookies like pumpkin cookies. I like certain sweet rolls but can't stand others. Regular cake is fine but carrot cake, spice cake and heavy pound cake type things are not my idea of a treat.
I'm not sure what quality it is exactly about these things that is offensive to me, but I figure that it's all stuff I probably shouldn't be eating anyway so I'll just go with it!

Serious Home Improvement

This is what my laundry room looks like right now.

Kind of makes you happy you aren't me, huh? No worries actually, it's being done by a contractor. The whole thing should be done in a few days.

It's just kind of shocking to come home and find a pile of dirt in my house that should actually be under it.

(P.S. Just in case you're wondering, I did not choose the yellow paint. If all goes as planned, next week those walls will be a totally different color.)

Tennis Anyone?

I was fairly spastic as a kid. It's not like I couldn't walk without falling down, but I couldn't throw or catch or aim to save my life. I participated on all of the sports teams in Young Womens' but I was never what you would call an "asset" to the team (unless you count the fact that my presence would often insure that we didn't have to forfeit due to lack of players). I did, however, join the high school cross-country team my sophomore year. Not because I was a particularly fast runner, but because all of my siblings had done it before me and I felt compelled to give it a try. I figured it was something I could do even as uncoordinated as I was--I thought, how hard is it to run? "You just go that way real fast, if something gets in your way--turn." (Unfortunately, I discovered running is rather hard and painful and I wasn't very good at it, so I only ran that one year!)

As a self proclaimed "spastic person," I have never done much in the way of sports or fitness other than walking or aerobics. I have always just been very hesitant to participate in many activities for fear of making a complete fool of myself. Which is why I surprised even myself when I decided to take up tennis this past year. I had been wanting to get more active and I was looking for something my husband and I could do together--plus, I thought the short little tennis skirts were super cute!

So I signed up for summer tennis lessons at the local rec center. As I drove over to the courts on the first day of class I was terrified. ("What if I can't even make contact with the ball?" "What if I can't get it over the net?" "What if the class is full of twelve year olds and I'm just a ridiculous old lady?" "What if I look like an idiot?") I was grateful to discover that the class consisted of a bunch of other average moms just like me, and moreover, I was not any more spastic than anyone else. After that first lesson I was hooked--I loved playing tennis! Sure, I sometimes missed the ball and I had a hard time serving, but I was having fun. As the two week class continued I noticed that the other women in the class seemed to be making great improvements. I, however, was just as awkward as the first day.

But for the first time in my life, I didn't care.

I had a bit of an epiphany after that tennis class--I have been denying myself a whole lot of fun (and fitness!) over the years by letting my fear of embarrassment control what I do or don't do. I may never be much of a pro at tennis but I have a blast playing it. And it is an activity my husband and I enjoy doing together--and that's all I need it to be anyway.

Who knows, maybe it's time I get out there and figure out what other sports I've been missing out on. I could even try running again. I'll probably never be as spastic as Phoebe, but I wouldn't even care if I am.

Fact or Fiction

A friend of mine recently "tagged" me on her blog. The deal is I'm supposed to write four facts about me, only three of which are actually true, and you are supposed to guess which one of the four is false. I'm kind of new to this whole blogging thing but I'll give it a shot!

1. I was born right on my due date and weighed almost 10 pounds.

2. Although I am the daughter of a beekeeper and was raised on a honey farm, I am deathly allergic to all stinging insects.

3. I was once the star of a Korean radio show.

4. I don't like sweet breads.

So? Any guesses?

I'll give the answer in a few days!

Welcome

I've thought for quite a long time that it would be fun to start my own blog, but the idea of actually doing one was very overwhelming. I regularly read the blogs of several of my friends, all of whom have significantly more writing experience than me. So the thought of doing one myself has been intimidating to say the least. However, the other night as I spent several hours at my computer reading the blogs of my friends and getting caught up on their lives I thought, "I could totally do this."

So here's my very first post on my very own blog!

I should clarify that this blog is not likely to be a newsletter of my family (although I'll write about them often) nor is it going to be a forum for me to expound on my opinions on current events (although I'm often more opinionated than even I realize). This is probably just going to be a compilation of all of my random thoughts, musings and observations. I can't promise that I'll write with any regularity or even with much of a purpose, but I hope to have a bit of fun with it.

PS If you find yourself confused by the title of this blog, I should inform you that "Blondie" is a nickname I acquired just this year and only use it on blogger!