Arguments

This was the argument at our house after we got out of the car last night.

Kenna: "Dad, I think that bright star by the moon is Venus."
Alyssa: "No it's not."
Kenna: "Yes, it is. Right there. That one."
Alyssa: "No, it's NOT. That's a satellite."
Kenna: "No, satellites MOVE. That's not a satellite."
Alyssa: "Some satellites stay still. It's a satellite."
Kenna: "No it's not. It's VENUS. It's a planet."

They went back and forth, louder and louder. It felt a little like watching the Monty Python sketch about the African and European Swallows.

Matt leaned over to me as we finished getting all the stuff out of the car and said, "Do you think other parents have problems with their 5 and 3 year olds arguing about stuff like this?"

If they do...I pity them.

I have a friend!

I saw this over HERE the other day and had to share it (if only so no one thinks I'm off my rocker when I start singing it). Listen to the whole thing and really pay attention to the words...I promise it's worth it.




(Check out the guy rockin' it in his blue shoes and orange guitar...and the guy in the group of background singers that looks completely ashamed to be there.)

When you get done go HERE and read all the comments. Also very funny.

Slip of the...slip

Yesterday started off like any other day.

Alarm goes off at 4:24. I stumble over to the dresser, mash the snooze button and crawl back to bed.

Repeat at 4:33.

Repeat at 4:42.

At 4:51, the alarm goes off again. Since I now have 9 minutes to get ready before I have to head out the door, I make a beeline to the bathroom and get ready as quick as possible.

At 5:07, I pull out of the garage and head to work.

Everything continued in the normal routine (minus some mysterious head cold that attacked me half way through the day) until I got home with the kids in the afternoon.

Now, I'm sure this is a sight to behold anyway...picture a mom of three in her work clothes (knee length skirt and nylons of course). She has, count them, 4 bags of varying sizes on her right shoulder and is trying to get a baby carrier, complete with a 21 pound 6-month old baby, out of a Jeep with a lift kit. (Also a copious number of commas at her disposal...) As she is occupied with this, the other two children run across the yard to check for ripe tomatoes.

This poor haggard mother (pity me!) lugs the carrier (HEAVY) and the massive amounts of luggage (AWKWARD) toward the other children, waving at the neighbor driving by while calling to the kids to come in the house. As she turns around to walk in the house with said burdens, she notices a strange restrictive feeling about the middle of her calves and looks down.

Her slip is pooled around her ankles.

And the neighbor was a witness.

No wonder they put their house up for sale.

Aside from The Great Embarrassment, this evening was great. Matt's dad and aunt (probably my favorite of them all) came over with some strawberry pie. The kids about keeled over with excitement (we don't get many visitors at our house) and had to show them every trick in their repertoire and every toy in their collection. We had a nice chat (in between the "flip overs" and zoo of stuffed animals that paraded through the room). They are just plain good people and fun to talk to.

By the way...

Oh and this....

This is TOTALLY me.

FYI.

Medicine for an (already) rough day...

It's 7:30am and I'm already having one of "those" days.

Then I find this...

And I get me a good giggle.

Too bad I don't have a Hawaii Chair or I would REALLY be set.

Say hello to Jack Daniel!

So, a friend and I went out to lunch for her birthday today. As we were chatting and perusing our menus, our server came by to introduce himself. He asked if we wanted anything to drink and then I noticed it.

His name tag said Jack Daniel.

It's just one of those in-jokes that he must have with the other servers, I thought. Like "Gumby" or "Jimbo" or something.

My friend noticed too and said, "Is that really your name, Jack Daniel?"

This was his reply:

"Yes, and I have a sister named Sherry and another named Brandy."

...

This is either a very interesting case of predestination for career by naming convention or a sad example of "theme names" gone wrong.

P.S. Don't get me started theme names.

Say What?

I went to pick up the kids this afternoon from my wonderful Sister-in-Law and this is the exchange that followed between the kids and I:

Me: Lyssa, come get in the car sweetie.
Alyssa: *wanders around to the other side of the car where said SIL is putting her sister in the car*
Me: Lyssa, come here and get in the car. Brother is crying. We need to go.
Alyssa: *follows SIL to her car*
Me: LYSSA. COME HERE.
Alyssa: *starts crying*
Me: *walks over and picks up child to put her in the car*
Alyssa: I want her. *motions to SIL*
Me: *dies a little inside, but puts her in the car anyway*
Alyssa: *continues crying*
McKenna: My heart is breaking a little too, mom. I'll miss Jessica.

Where do these children come from and where do they pick up these phrases?

AARP?

I didn't have an age complex. Really. Being 30 didn't bother me until now.

I keep getting mail from the AARP telling me that their records show I'm eligible for their program. Doesn't AARP stand for American Association of Retired Persons? Don't you have to be at least 50 to join?

WHAT?

Either they have changed their program or they know something about my age that I don't.

Maybe I can get a good deal on insurance?

My Amazing Neighbor

Alternate Title #1: How I Drove the First Counselor in Our Ward Insane
Alternate Title #2: Why My Next Door Neighbor Hates Me
Alternate Title #3: Tips on How to Loose a Ward in 3 Days

I'm completely and totally positive that my next door neighbor must hate me right now. Why you ask? Let me explain how it all started...(warning: long winded post ahead)

Tuesday Night:
I have a sudden realization that if Dad has to go in for chemo next week, there's a good chance he won't be able to attend Liam's blessing on the 13th. Enter Panic Mode.

Call Mom, ask if she thinks I should try to get the blessing switched to this weekend since family will be in town anyway. She is patient. Reassures me that it might not be necessary but tells me to do it if I think that will be the best thing. (Fabulous, isn't she?)

Still in Panic Mode. Call Bishop's house and leave a message. It's YM/YW night, he's probably at the Church right? Feel a little bit better. Wait for him to call back. Give up and go to sleep.

Wednesday:
Wonder all day why I haven't yet heard from the Bishop. Decide to call when I get home from work.

Call his house around dinner time. Guess what? He's out of town. Enter Panic Mode again. Call next door neighbor who is the first counselor. He's not home. He's helping his son with his Eagle Project at the hospital. (What a nice guy!) Ask his wife to have him call me when he gets home. She says she's a flake (???) and might forget so call back at 9 if he hasn't called by then.

Carry my cell phone everywhere I go around the house until he finally calls at about 9:15. I explain the situation to him...he says he has to call the Bishop to check if it's okay. He'll try in the morning and call me back. I ask him to please call as soon as he finds out. I'm sure I'm sounding desperate at this point.

Thursday:
Repeat of the carrying cell phone thing. No call. Get home, putter around the house. Do laundry. Feed children. Talk to mother-in-law to warn her what might be coming. During this phone call, have an epiphany. It's Easter weekend...that means Easter Jeep Safari. That means the male portion of this side of the family is all out of town. Say a few choice words (in my head only people!). Also feel a huge surge of guilt as I realize that mother-in-law has a huge paper due tomorrow and she still wants to make the boy's blessing outfit. She says she will call and see when the guys are planning on coming home. Feel more guilt that they might have to leave their trip early.

Call mom. Feel even more guilt. She just wants to know by Saturday night so they can run to the grocery store to get food to help me out with the family gathering afterwards. Wonder how I have such a cool family...I certainly don't belong here.

Around 6:30 I finally decide to call the neighbor. He hasn't been able to contact the Bishop. I explain that I have family in other states that need to know this information so as soon as he finds out if he could please call. He says he'll call the Stake President. (This is when he starts hating me...)

He calls me back a little while later. The Stake President says it's fine. We'll just treat it like a normal Fast Sunday and do the blessing after the Sacrament. What?! Wait, he didn't understand me. I (thought I) said that we needed to do a little private shindig for this. He hates me more, but is still nice. Oh, let me call and see what I can find out about THAT. (I'm sure he says this while making a mental note to start looking for another house so he can get away from me...)

Talk to MIL. The guys have to check out of their hotel at 10. They can be home by Sunday afternoon. Yay. I'm not shortening their trip after all. Sigh of relief. A little less guilt. She says she's almost done with the paper and it shouldn't be a big deal to sew the outfit. MIL suggests to start around 4 on Sunday. Not what my family was originally thinking, but could work. I have to call and see when my brother is going home.

Call mom. She asks brother, they're not going home til around 5:30 Sunday night. Yay! We found a time when everyone can be there.

Call Matt to tell him the good news. I tell him. Silence. OH CRAP. He has to work. THE HUSBAND CAN'T BE THERE AT THAT TIME IDIOT. Yeah. Feel this big. He says he'll see what he can work out. Guilt that went away? BACK NOW. BIG TIME.

Counselor calls back. Stake President says that's okay. He now has to call the Second Counselor who is also out of town to find out if he can "officiate" at the thing since he is SICK. More guilt. This poor man! I apologize profusely, thank him a million times and he says he'll call me back when he finds out.

(Hang in there...almost done)

He calls back again. Second counselor thinks he can be there but has to check with his wife (yeah, that's right, I'm taking him away from his family on Easter Sunday. Go me.)

He calls back again. Second Counselor's Wife is a saint. He can make it. 4:00 on Sunday, my house (PANIC....house needs to be cleaned....when am I going to fit that in!). Great! Thank you! I owe you something big!

We have it all worked out now.

If only Matt can make it.

Today OR How I saw a woman's backside, met a bearded lady, and had a conversation with myself...

All of this in one day even!

I finally decided to get my eyes checked (who knew you were supposed to go more than once every 6 years?) so I made an appointment with a new optometrist. Turns out I couldn't remember who the last one I went to was after waiting that long. Go figure.

In this particular office, they share space with a regular medical clinic and a pharmacy. So as I'm sitting there waiting for my appointment (and waiting...and waiting...apparently their computers went down and caused a 30 minute delay in appointments) a young mother comes in with her 2 small children and grandmother in tow. She is there to help her grandmother get to a doctor's appointment. She is standing talking with the receptionist when I noticed her pants were...how shall we say...sliding slowly southward. Shall we also say, I saw more of her than I would have liked to see?

Of course you can feel that things are getting a little...chilly. So what does she do? Pulls up her pants you say? NOT SO! Pulls DOWN her shirt.

Huh?

So I'm sitting there shaking my head at the slight oddity of it, when another woman walks in and strides confidently up to the pharmacy counter. She turns in her prescription, turns around to walk out and I was able to see her face. SURPRISE. She had a full beard. No. Lie. A beard as full as Matt's. And it looked like she had been letting it grow for about a week. Now, I'm not making fun, it was just, you know, kind of surprising.

So I go home from my appointment thinking, "What a strange set of encounters over there at my new doctor's office."

End of weird day? Not really.

The Relief Society President came over to bring the baby something from the presidency. She is a very sweet lady, and very kind to bring Liam a gift. But she doesn't talk. Like, at all. She sweetly sat there on the couch, looking at me and the baby in my arms and didn't say a word. So pretty much that made me feel uncomfortable and I felt the need to talk just to fill up the silence. I ended up having a relatively nice conversation with myself all about the baby and how he's doing.

So yeah. Fun day. Always nice when you can be reminded that we all have our quirks. Except me. I don't have any quirks. Right, honey?

Right?

Confessions of a Working Mom

Look HERE

Yeah, that...I've done some of that.

Shh...don't tell.

New Year's Eve

Goodness, we're boring. I fell asleep before Matt got home last night. He woke me up as he came in the door. Then we sat and watched TV until almost 1am before we realized it was New Years.

I remember when we used to plan stuff out, have people over and make a big deal of New Years Eve. Now we barely remember it, except for the fact that I don't have work the next day. I think we have now officially earned the title of "old married couple".

I'll take it though. It's comfy.

No wonder...

After seeing me limp around the office on my last visit, my OB recommended that I go see a Physiatrist (I thought she said Psychiatrist at first! I probably need that too...) to get checked out.

At the appointment today she poked at me a bit and determined that I had broken the tailbone (she couldn't tell how badly without an x-ray, which is obviously impossible at the moment) and that my SI joint is out. This is not normal, even in pregnancy, so I get to go to physical therapy. Yippee. And if that doesn't work, I get a fun shot in my hip. Even better.

Well no wonder I can't sit, stand, lay, walk or generally move without hurting (especially after yesterday's marathon of cookie making!).

Yet, for some reason, breaking my tailbone while pregnant, especially this far along, seems extremely funny and ironic to me. If it didn't hurt so bad, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing about it.

This kid is definitely gunning for the position of youngest child.

I must be nuts...

I spent all evening making about 12 dozen cookies. What was I thinking?

Oh, and NOTE TO SELF: Don't try to mix up a quadruple batch of peanut butter cookies when you have no idea where the mixer is and must use rubber spatula. This does NOT make for an effective mixing tool and consequently results in the mixing taking excessive amounts of time.

Customer Service...or a lack thereof

This is not my month for fabulous customer service. I have had a few choice experiences in the last couple weeks, only one of which I will repeat here.

About 3 weeks ago, I noticed that my credit card from one of our banks was expiring at the end of the month and I thought. "Hey, that's weird. I haven't received my replacement card yet. Maybe they haven't gotten the address update." So I called my parents house to see if they had received any mail for us. Nope. No mail.

I went into said bank to double check that they had the correct address and to ask about the credit cards. Apparently there was a mix-up and the cards were made, but never sent out. Watch the mail for a little while, if they don't show up, call the bank and they will send out new ones. Okay. Fine. No big deal.

I waited two weeks. Still no cards. So, I called the bank. After more than 20 minutes of being on hold while they tried to figure out this difficult situation, the lady comes back on the line to tell me that the cards had been waiting at one of the local branches for me to pick up.

WHAT?

Well, when was someone going to tell me this? Nevermind that it wasn't my normal branch, or even one that was close to me. Just a phone call letting me know that they had them would have been helpful so I wasn't worrying that someone had stolen them out of my mailbox.

I asked if they could send them to my house. No.

HUH?

Again, why not? That's what NORMALLY happens. You get the new cards in the MAIL, at your HOUSE.

Can you at least transfer them to a branch remotely close to my house. Sure. The one up the street. Should be there by Tuesday at the latest. Great. Finally.

That Tuesday happened to be today. Now, Tuesdays are more structured days for us than most. I pick up the girls and then have about an hour to run errands before Kenna has to be to her tumbling class. I decided to use that hour on this Tuesday to go pick up the cards. Which involves me going about 20 minutes away from where Kenna's class is, but I figured it would be a quick stop and we'd have plenty of time to get back.

I go to the drive through window, give the girl my information and ask for my cards.

"They're not here." She says.
I give her a blank stare for about 30 seconds.
"Are you kidding?" I say.
"No. Were you expecting them here?"
Another blank stare from me while I try to refrain from saying "duh" and smacking her on the forhead.
"Yes. They told me that they would send them over to this branch."
"Who told you that?"
I'm 8 months pregnant and she expects me to remember what happened nearly a week ago...
"I don't remember. Some lady at the Sandy branch."
"I'll call over there and see what I can find out."

Apparently this girl doesn't have any more pull than I do because she was also on hold for about 15 minutes while the people at the other branch tried to figure out AGAIN what had happened to my cards.

They were still sitting at the other branch. *sigh*

Fortunately, she was a little bit more persuasive and was able to get them to send them to my house so I didn't have to go through this whole exercise again.

Now we just have to see if they actually show up....

Are you kidding me?

Let’s start at the beginning…

Last Thursday I got to work at early like normal. And, like normal at that time of the morning, had my pick of parking spaces. When I went to leave work, I had been boxed in to my parking spot. There was a column on the drivers side, a car parked super close to me on the passenger side, and a car parked perpendicular to me and just far ahead enough of me to make it hard to get out.

Long story short, I ended up getting up close and personal with the column and adding some new body contours and a yellow stripe or two to the paintjob on my nice, fairly new car.

This afternoon, I took the car in to the body shop for an estimate on fixing up the MINOR damage. (Seriously, you can barely see it…very small dent and a few 1 to 2 inch long yellow stripes.) I thought…maybe a couple hundred dollars. The damage is confined to the middle of the door; they can probably buff the paint out, yadda, yadda. The estimator comes back to show me the paperwork - $1,110.84. Talk about adding insult to injury…

They also have to take the car for an entire week. So now we’re in the predicament of what to do about that. We have to have two cars to maintain our schedules. Fortunately, I have an extremely wonderful and generous family, which includes a brother with an extra car. (I also have good insurance that is reducing the out of pocket repair cost to $250.)

Guess we know what I’m getting for Christmas this year…