10 for April

I wanted to do a sum-up April list, so here goes:

10 things I did today:

1. Picked up my dry-cleaning. It's a cool old vintage dress that I found at my grandma's house when I was 18. I might wear it to church on Sunday if I don't feel silly in it.


2. Got a check from the dealership that sold us our ILLEGALLY tinted windows to pay for the ticket I got last month. I LOVE that they were willing to pay the ticket!


3. Got books at the library.


4. Visited with my niece and her two sweet daughters while her awesome hubby cleaned my carpets.


5. Made dinner for a girl in my ward who had a new baby.


6. Went to the music store for a new piano book. I swear, the music store is getting to be as addicting as the book store!


7. Talked to my mother-in-law, who has left to help take care of her mom who has cancer. It's so sad having someone you love leaving this world.


8. Cleaned my bathrooms.


9. Watched my lovely cat get sick on my freshly cleaned carpet. Seriously? Sigh.


10. Returned High School Musical 3 to the video store. Do I dare say that it made me a little teary at the end? Ah, Troy, you are pretty dang hot, for a pretend 17-year-old jock, I mean.

9 things I want to remember from April:

1. Easter, without my dad. I hate all these new milestones.


2. Writing letters to Shane's grandma. It is such a mixed blessing to be able to say good-bye like that. Good-bye, for real, I mean. But I am grateful, because you don't always get to tell you loved one exactly what they mean to you. I'm glad I could.


3. Ben learning how to ride a scooter. He can even put his back foot on the scooter while he glides down the sidewalk. Precious!


4. Thomas graduating from his first piano lesson book to his second. Soon he will play far better than me, but I'm cool with that.


5. Starting to teach Shane piano. He told me that he wanted to learn, so I bought him a lesson book and we started talking intervals and dynamics and black keys and white keys. Awesome.


6. Painting my kitchen. I'm still not 100% satisfied with one of the colors I chose, but it's growing on me.


7. Getting the stomach flu for the second time in 6 months. Because I've really lost my bragging rights, now.


8. Getting through the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Holy cow, the Bible is detailed. I've never been anywhere past Genesis, so I'm seeing a lot of material for the first time.


9. Going my second month Dr. Pepper free. I think I've achieved acceptance, finally.

8 things I'm looking forward to in the coming months:

1. Thomas going back on track for his final 9 weeks of 2nd grade. The years go so fast!


2. Some more cool-ish weather for comfortable runs.


3. Seeing my kids skinny little legs poking out of their summer shorts. I got them each a pair of plaid shorts this year, and they look so freaking cute in them.


4. Getting together with a few bloggers in May for dinner.


5. The annual tradition of going to the parade in my hometown in early June. It's something we've always done, and it somehow always marks the beginning of summer for me.


6. Seeing the new Harry Potter movie in July. I saw some trailers this week and it looks awesome. I can't wait!


7. Seeing the movie version of the Time Traveler's Wife, which will come out in August. I've been watching Rachel McAdam's movies just to get warmed up. Oh, I hope they do a good job on the movie.


8. Hiking Timpanogas for the 4th summer in a row. I never get tired of that mountain!

7 things I'm grateful for:

1. Grandparents.


2. My new purple cell phone.


3. Long nights watching the kids play outside.


4. Green grass, especially from the all the rain we've had.


5. Hot chocolate, which is a semi-substitute for my former drinking habit.


6. My new running shoes, that seem to make me run faster than my old ones did.


7. Tulips, which are very abundantly dotting my front yard.

6 random guilty pleasures:

1. Celine Dion. I mean, who can feel very hard core when singing along to Celine? But I do. Embarrassing.
2. Anything that can be peeled, plucked or picked. You know, stray hairs or dangling skin or whatever. Is that gross?
3. Reading in bed while Shane is going to sleep. I feel bad keeping him up, but it is so relaxing and makes me feel happy.
4. Chocolate and bananas, lately. Mmmmmm...
5. Cafe Rio grilled chicken salads. I can eat the whole thing in one sitting. I'm an eater, I tell you!
6. Pour some Sugar on Me by Def Leopard. Totally not cool when viewed from my alternative-music past, but so fun to run to.

5 movies we rented in April:

1. Pokemon. I hate Pokemon, but my kids love it.
2. The Duchess, with Kiera Knightly. Man, the guy at the movie store carried on and on about it, saying how he'd seen in 10 times and cried each time, but I didn't love it.
3. High School Musical 3. I actually liked it a lot.
4. Marley and Me. Didn't realize that it wasn't really 100% kid friendly; had to fast forward a few parts. I thought I was safe with a PG movie, who knew?
5. Twilight. Shane even watched it with me. And movie Edward is a lot hotter than movie Jacob, so far.

4 random people to thank:

1. The lady in my neighborhood who was paying attention on Tuesday when I nearly ran in front of her while running. Maybe I was playing the iPod a little too loudly...
2. Ben and Thomas' friends for keeping them so well-entertained. I seriously should pay those kids, they help me out big.
3. Shane, for staying home tomorrow (Friday) while I go to my company retreat. I love when my kids don't have to go to the babysitters.
4. All of you who read my blog. Thanks for stopping by and reading my lists.

3 places I hope to visit this summer/fall:

1. California. Wheeee!
2. Park City for a few nights vacation. We went last year and it was a blast, and so close.
3. Zion, for a friend's wedding. I've never been to Zion's before. Can you say that, living in Utah?

2 things going on in my family this weekend:

1. My non-blogging sister Suzette is graduating from Nursing School. Congratulations! I'm so proud of you. But what were you thinking? Now you have to get a job.
2. The same sister is getting sealed to her husband who was killed in an accident 8 years ago. What a great day that will be for her and her children.

1 person I miss:

1. My friend Rebecca. I think she was in a play recently (thank you, Facebook) and I haven't found out how it went. I bet you were wonderful, Rebecca!

Confessions

I’ve always known that I don’t fit into the little box that other Mormons I know seem to occupy so nicely. In fact, I once ended a relief society lesson that I was teaching by announcing to the ladies that I was a Jack Mormon. It made me want to create the following list, and so here goes.

The Grand List of Reasons that that I am, and have always been, a Bad Mormon:

1. I’ve never nor has my family ever had a subscription to The Church News. Nor did I know it came out every week in your Deseret News newspaper until years after I was married.
2. Around my house, we read the Salt Lake Tribune. Boo! Hiss!
3. I never get any of the good “85% off with an additional 15%” deals on clothes, food, and the like that my neighbors get. I tend to pay *gasp!* full price, or, when I’m lucky, 50% off.
4. I understand the little-known concept that wickedness might never have been happiness, but man, it was fun. They didn’t really teach that principle in seminary.
5. I never once set foot in Young Women during the two years I should have been a Laurel, despite the fact I was the Mia Maid class president. How does that happen?
6. I quit seminary in my junior year of high school. The replacement class I found? Algebra I, even though I was also taking trigonometry. Man, my fellow algebra I students thought had skillz.
7. Sometimes on Easter while growing up, we went to the Sand Dunes instead of church. And if Christmas fell on a Sunday, I can almost guarantee we wouldn’t have been there.
8. I regularly have to wonder if someone from my ward will see me purchasing something that goes against the word of wisdom. Even if it isn’t mine, they still see it in my cart!
9. I’ve never had a coupon at the grocery store that made any of the items in my cart free. And I’m too lazy to go through the effort of figuring out how to get my hands on such coupons.
10. My bookshelves are full of books written by gentiles who I regularly rave about. I think the only LDS author by whom I own a book is Stephanie Meyer. I guess you could count my scriptures, but I’m not sure if God is a Latter-day Saint or not.
11. I used to order real margaritas at restaurants when we would go out with a friend and his under-21 girlfriend. She would order the virgin margarita and then we would swap. I didn’t really feel that I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor, either.
12. Speaking of Stephanie Meyer, I don’t own the entire Twilight collection. I do have the 1^st and 4^th books. And I didn’t see Twilight until 2 weeks ago. Now I know for sure that I’m not living up to my full potential.
13. I can’t name all the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (either current or the original, thank you very much). But I can recognize most of their names, I think.
14. I didn’t see the sustaining part of general conference until I had two children, and even then I had to make a special effort to see it. I don’t think I even knew they did it during conference until after I was married. Saturday afternoon conference was for shopping, I thought.
15. And finally, I’ve never, ever once made green (or any other color) jell-o as a side dish. I haven’t even considered it.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but you get the picture.

So in what ways are YOU a Jack Mormon, or Jack Catholic, or Jack anything? Something you want to confess?

On the overabundance of testosterone

We went to dinner at Applebee's on Friday. Now, Applebee's is not my favorite place to eat. I'd rather go with Chili's, but Thomas had a free meal, so it seemed appropriate for him to use it. And I'm not one to turn down going to eat.

There was a family sitting behind us made up of a mom, dad, and two daughters of the toddler-sort. I noticed them as they stood up to leave. The dad had just picked up the youngest of the two, and was trying to get her settled on his hip before trucking her out. I smiled at him, and thought: we have a lot in common.

We are both the aliens in our house.

Now, my kids will tell me that there are as many girls in our house as boys. That is because they count our 3, unknown-to-them-sexless cats. Sure, they are technically girls, but only because they were born with girl-cat parts, which have never nor will ever work.

No, I am the sole girl in the family. Which means I do a lot, and I mean a LOT of eye-rolling at things like farts at the dinner table, arm farts whenever shirts are off, and loud burps emanating from small bodies. I am the only one in my house who doesn't turn kitchen implements into swords or other such weapons. I wait alone for the tickle-monster game to be completed, while they groan that it ever has to end.

I look at my male counterparts, the ones with all daughters and wonder: what atrocities of being the sole male in their household are they enduring? Do they have to sit through long periods of hair-bow making while watching the clock? Do they tire of stepping on barbie doll shoes in the same way I tire of stepping on Lego's? I'll probably never know.

It makes me wish (again) that my dad was in a state where I could talk to him. Was our lovely yard a labor of love, or a solace to escape all the estrogen in the house? What did he do while we tried on clothes for hours at the mall? I never once heard him mention wanting a son, but how could he not want someone playing on his team in the house. Someone to throw the baseball with, or talk about the basketball game with, or just sit in silence together and be grateful for their testosterone.

I know I look at those cats and wish they were little girls with blue eyes and brown hair and dimples. They would look so sweet next to their handsome, blue eyed brothers, who I wouldn't trade for the whole world.

I'd just like to even the score out a little, and let them do a little eye-rolling for once.

Blogging slump and other stuff

My blog has been boring of late. I've been a little disinterested in my blog, and blogging in general. There are months when I can't post enough, and others when just signing into blogger seems like too much effort. Ah well. I'm sure everyone goes through this sometime or another.


Now for other stuff. I've been thinking about how much I like my little family. Two weeks ago, when we painted the kitchen, I took an extra day off. I told my boss as I asked for the day off that something would happen that would make me repent for scheduling an extra day. After all, I usually get 4 day weekends, anyway. She didn't believe me. That night, I started throwing up: I had the flu. Karma gets me every time.


So, I essentially had a 6 day weekend that week. It was heaven. I finished up the kitchen, colored Easter eggs with my friend and her kids, got my house extra clean for Easter, and spent time with my kids while they were on spring break.


Thomas and my third son, Chandler. He's not really mine, but might as well be.


Then this past week, I stayed home. Most of the time, I fill my two days off with lots and lots of activities, but I somehow found myself with 3 days of being at home. Thomas and Ben ran in and out of the house with their friends. I actually went to piano practice, which I'm sure shocked my teacher (I'd even practiced - who knew!). Yesterday I went through all the folders on my picture drive and deleted all he bad, blurry, and duplicate pictures.


Today I took my boys to their first ever stake conference. They were bored to tears, but I'm glad we were there together. And tonight, we walked up to Thomas' school to play basketball. In an adjoining field below the school were 6 antelope, grazing on the new spring grass. My boys were amazed. Looking out from the school's field, you can see three temples: Oquirrh Mountain, Jordan River, and the new Draper temple. How many people in the world can see three temples in the same vista?


I guess what I'm getting at is this: I like this little family of mine. As my boys get big and they start doing new things, I'm amazed that it was my fault they came into this world. Amazed, but also so grateful. We have a lot of fun together. I like the way my life feels: it feels right; like I am where I'm supposed to be and doing what I'm supposed to be doing. That is priceless to me.

Blogging slump or not, I'm a lucky girl.

Easter a go-go

Gotta put some pictures out from Easter.

My cute family!

My mom and most of my nieces and nephews.

Me, Amy, my mom, and my sister Michele.

Before church. My boys got Easter clothes. Thomas was so proud in his suit. They were so good in church; if I had known that the source of church-restlessness was not having church clothes, I'd have bought them centuries ago. They loved having church shoes almost as much as their clothes.

Cute boys in my dad's yard. So sad he can't take care of it anymore.

Stuff I don't want to forget about Easter this year:

• I made the cheese potatoes. First time for me! They weren't too bad, but I like them better when someone else makes them.
• My niece Lyndsay announcing an arrival to come in December. I'm so excited!
• The first Easter without my dad being there. I missed him a lot. I will go and see him soon.
• Eating egg-salad sandwiches with Vonnay. We were so glad to visit with her for lunch!
• Sitting in church with very well-dressed and well-behaved boys. Lucky me!
• Using a lot of exclamation points in this post!
• Still going strong without the Dr. Pepper. I can't decide what to do....
• The annual Easter-egg hunt at my moms. It is fun to watch my kids getting older. They aren't the littlest kids around anymore, which is strange.

Did you have a good Easter? What will you remember?

Saturday Project

Back when Shane and I were in our 20's, we built a house. Well, really, we had a builder build us a house. But, since we were young and dumb, I mean young and able, we decided to do something called "sweat equity." What this basically meant is we would put our blood, sweat and tears into painting and cleaning our house before it was completed.

10 years ago, I loved the paint we picked. But I've been itching to paint over our pink paint in our kitchen for about a year. Friday I armed myself with a gazillion paint samples, which Saturday I turned into actual paint, and voila! We were suddenly spending the day painting the kitchen.

My kitchen went from this:

(there is a slight amount of paint on the front wall in this picture, but you see what we were starting from. Light, light, light pink, a la the year 1999.

My handsome husband, who spent the day rolling grey paint on my desperately-needing-to-be-painted walls.

The bruise-purple paint I spent all of Saturday applying to the wall over my kitchen table. I had some doubts whether it would ever cover, but it did. And see the ladder? Yeah, I had to scale the ladder so I could climb on top of the plant shelf/closet you can see to the left of the ladder. I was terrified that I would fall through the sheet rock and so I painted in some pretty awkward positions. By the 4th coat (because yes, it took 4 coats to cover!) I was happily sitting indian style up there. And, in case you wondered, I did wear most of the 10 years worth of dust for the rest of the day.

To this:

The finished product. Well, not totally finished, because I still have to edge the ceiling and paint under the cabinets, but you can see how different it looks.

My beautiful purple wall. I can only thank Melanie and Shelly for teaching me about the awesome power of an angle brush for edges! I love how this corner shows where the gray and purple meet. Oh, and I still have to paint the kitchen nook. It will be pink, which eventually we will carry into the living room, when we can forget how big of a pain painting is, I mean.

Anyway. What did you do this weekend that was unexpected?