Divine Intervention?

I spent some time this evening signing Daniel up for the Washington Virtual Academy (WAVA). It's the same organization that Stephanie has Kaith enrolled in. Anyway....as with most legal documents there comes along near the end the "fine print". Most of it had to do with "you are responsible to take good care of the material we send you, or else!". Standard boilerplate. I did crack up at the clause that implied that we needed to be insured for fire, theft, accident, ACTS OF GOD, etc...

Yes, it actually said "acts of God". I find it refreshing that the legal minds behind insurance forms/claims actually acknowledge God.

Cool.

I was also amused that a virtual academy required shot records.

Farewell July

July 2007 - what was I thinking?

Hard to believe how quickly summer is passing. As a child it felt like a year. As a parent I cringe when retailers start having "back to school" sales on July 5th. I'm not too caught up in that this year - I don't have anyone actually going to a real school on September 2nd. Well, Alex and I will be going to seminary.

Time to turn the calendar from July to August.

To do list for August:

• Jonah's baptism
• camping with Tia
• hiking with YW
• weekend without kids
• Marcy's wedding?
• Seminary inservice meetings/preparation
• organizing homeschool for Danny

I'm sure there's lots more, but I don't want to get too overwhelmed. Right now the only overwhelming thing is seminary - and that's because it's new and unexpected. Wish me luck.

Word of the Day

Dishabille

dis·ha·bille (dĭs'ə-bēl', -bē') n.
1. The state of being partially or very casually dressed.
2. Casual or lounging attire.
3. An intentionally careless manner.

I hesitated to use this word - but only because I've never known how to pronounce it. It's one of those words that I have come across in reading - and sort of invented my own fake French pronunciation. If pressed to read it aloud it would probably sound like dish- ah- blay. Which is really more Spanish sounding - but since it's not a word I often come across, well, I just sort of ignored pronunciation. Unfortunately, I will probably continue to mispronounce it - but mostly because I don't come across it often enough to make the mental effort.

Why is it the word of the day? I just found out yesterday that all three of my boys will be gone the same weekend. Yes, the stars are aligned. "Loungewear" here I come.

Tis' the season for summer vacations....

Evidently I was the only Young Women's leader in town this week. That's okay - most of the young women were out of town also. We had originally planned to take all the young women on a day hike - but after a show of hands on Sunday...2 hands....we decided to postpone the hike 2 weeks. Instead we all met at my house to play wii fit and frost a birthday cake for the MIA Maid teacher. The rest of the frosting was used to practice decorating cupcakes.

And now, for a word from our sponsers.

A little something to make you smile. It made me smile.

Blast from the Past

For FHE tonight we were discussing family history - particularly journals. Steve brought a bunch of journals - including one that I wrote in during 1979-1980. One entry caught my eye -

9/29/79 "....I'm sitting in a parking lot in Dupont, Washington writing in my journal and listening to a Neil Diamond tape."

Proof, Keira, that I listened to Neil back in the day. Possibly on an 8 track tape.

Grace Under Pressure

Maybe not exactly "grace" - but I do seem to get things accomplished when I have a deadline.

I expect to be released from my YW calling in the next 2 or 3 weeks - and it occurred to me that I am nearly finished with my personal progress goals. The main things I have left to do involve writing in my journal about what I've already done. Thankfully I kept notes. The one other thing I have left to do is to memorize two hymns. I suppose it would be a little cheating to choose "Keep the Commandments" (only one verse). Oh well, I'll take a gander through the hymn book this morning and see what strikes me. I'd be happy to take suggestions....

I wonder if the "Books of the New Testament" would be considered a hymn. Probably not. But it will come in useful for seminary.

Musical Trip Down Memory Lane

One Bad Apple.

Puppy Love.

Paper Roses.

What do all of these have in common? Yeah, sure, one or all of the Osmond family had a hit with the songs. But besides that?

I was surprised to hear all those and more during the Pioneer Day Concert. I recorded it yesterday - figuring that it would be nice Sunday afternoon spiritual entertainment. Yes, it was entertaining (Donny was looking pretty hot for a 50 year old grandfather)...but not quite as Sunday appropriate as I was expecting. I forget that the Mormon Tab. choir sings other types of music.

Bet you didn't know that I am merely 2 days older that Marie Osmond. And having Mormon boy Donny singing all about puppy love that was only one year older than us was every MIA Maids dream...I suspect that Marie was similarly a poster girl for teachers quorum boys....just ask Steve.

Lame "Word of the Day"

There are some words that really grate on a person. These tend to be overused "fad" words. Sometimes the words become more acceptable after a while - the word "awesome" comes to mind. As in "Totally awesome, dude". Yeah.

The word I object to this summer is "staycation".

It's like it's some brand new concept. Since gas prices are so high - people are opting to go "green" (another word that I find mildly offensive) and vacation at home. All of a sudden it's considered cool, hip, whatever...to see the sights around your own home town.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea. On the contrary, I think it's great. It's just the word "staycation" that I object to.

I remember more than a decade ago having homemaking mini classes on great day trip locations. Fun parks, museums, trails....Hmm. Sounds like staycation to me.

Provident Living?

My husband would like to have a basement that looks like this picture. Two problems. One: we don't actually have a basement. Two: I'm not that organized.

Yeah, I could buy all the stuff, but then you have to rotate stuff and try and use it before it explodes.

That said, I am going to try and work harder at having a better food storage supply. I suspect we could live on what we have in the house right now comfortably for a couple of months (maybe not all that comfortably, but we wouldn't starve), then survive on subsistence food for 2 or 3 more months. I will try and work up to a good solid 3 months worth of food - everyday food, not 1000 pounds of wheat ;)- and we'll see where we go from there.

Nathan burned me a cd about 3 years ago with this song that always reminds me of food storage. Nothing more inspiring than a post apocalyptic song that features canned food. Maybe I'll play it more often to motivate me.

C is for Chicken and Corn and Cantaloupe

I had one semester of Home Economics when I was in eighth grade. Besides our obligatory sewing project (I made a skirt) we had a unit on cooking and nutrition. I'm not totally sure how nutritious "tuna noodle casserole" was, but that's the only thing I remember cooking in that class. One other thing I remember was that our food should be colorful - not everything on the plate the same color. Okay, not sure how scientific that is, but I'll bet it has some truth to it. That said, the dinner I served tonight would not have gotten a passing grade. Well, maybe a "C", but not any higher than that.

All our food was all from the yellow/orange family.

Oh, and it all started with the letter "C". Corn, cantaloupe and cheesy chicken enchilada (sorry, Danny loves it).

I should have made cookies for dessert.

It's a Good Thing I'm an Early Riser

Well, I'm off the "tenterhooks". I made a few guesses last night as to what our high councilman was going to ask me to do - and after surprisingly few guesses I settled on....wait for it......seminary teacher.

Brother Lebo showed up at 5:30pm at my house today, and by 6:15 I was set apart as a seminary teacher. I don't know yet what age group I'll have, or how many kids, but I do know that the course of study this year is New Testament. I'm looking forward to it, really I am. Several years ago I used to substitute teach for seminary - and I think I've known since then that I would eventually be a seminary teacher - once Danny was old enough that I wouldn't have to be home in the morning to get him off to school.

Alex won't have the option of being late for seminary this year.

A new day is dawning. And I'll be up to see it.

Word of the Day

Tenterhook

ten·ter·hook /ˈtɛntərˌhʊk/ –noun
1. one of the hooks or bent nails that hold cloth stretched on a tenter. —Idiom
2. on tenterhooks, in a state of uneasy suspense or painful anxiety: The movie keeps one on tenterhooks until the very last moment.

Yeah. I'm feeling that state of uneasy suspense/painful anxiety. I had a phone call this evening from a member of our high council - he's coming to see me tomorrow - at the request of the stake president. Yeah. Tenterhooks.

(no, I'm not in trouble....I asked).

Anxious for Mail?

I find it pretty amusing that Andrew, self sufficient Andrew, really wants mail. It's very endearing. I will be nudging family and friends to write quite often....be afraid, be very afraid.

I had no idea that he would be able to send emails from the MTC - but evidently he can. I'm looking forward to them. Here's his first one:

Hello family,

How are all of you doing? I'm doing great here at the MTC. Let me just tell you how a typical day here goes, you can skip this if you want. I wake up at 6:15 AM in an attempt to get in the shower before a line forms. I dress and then head over to our classroom on the 5th floor by 7 AM to study/read for 45 minutes. Breakfast is at 7:45. 8:15 is Missionary Directed Time for me which means my companion, ElderAndrews and I choose what we wish to do. Options during this time include personal study, companionship study, Japanese Study,practicing teaching a lesson to volunteers, the referral center, or attending a skills workshop on something like companionship study. At11 AM it's off to gym or field. The gym includes some exercise machines, a track to run around, basketball, volleyball, and even four-square. At 12:30 it's time for lunch. 1:15 marks the beginning ofclass for the day. We are either taught about teaching lessons or Japanese. At 5:30 we eat dinner, then head right back for more class at 6:15. We have class until 9 PM and then companionships go over their plans for the next day. We arrive back at our residence at 9:30.Go to sleep at 10:30 PM, rinse and repeat.

I haven't told anyone the scripture I want on my missionary plack at home so I'll do so here. Proverbs 25:25 " As cold waters to a thirstysoul, so is good news from a far country."

Other things I found interesting was that our zone's sacrament meeting was mostly in Japanese. Everyone in the zone writes a ~3 minute talk in Japanese the week before and right before sacrament the Presidency asks 2 Elders to present their talks. I plan on joining the missionary choir here so hopefully that's fun. I haven't recieved any letters yet so I'm sad about that. :(Hopefully someone will write me soon. I mentioned www.DearElder.com to Dad but I'm going to guess he forgot about it. If anyone goes to that website they can easily send me same/next day mail for free. It's as easy as email but I can recieve that anytime of the week rather than just during my 30 minutes of email time. (If 30 minutes pass I'm automatically signed off even if I haven't sent my email yet so please use DearElder.com for now) I think you just have to select the Kobe Japan Mission. If needed I'm in Branch 27 District C. If you ask me questions I'll try to respond to them in my weekly email. I still have 10 minutes left so it's time for a funny story.

E-mail is very popular among the younger generations nowadays. Many missionaries are a little unsure or confused when sending their first letter. One missionary in my district accidentally mixed up the return and send addresses. So when he got mail his second day we were happy for him, when we found out it was from himself we all just had to smile. If anyone is interested in how Japanese study is going I'll tell you here. The second day we were here, our first day of class, we learned how to say simple prayers in Japanese. In essence they're Dear Heavenly Father. I thank thee for _____. Please bless _______. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. We're learning gospel words in Japaneseand it's pretty hard still to memorize them all. This Thursday we're going to be walking around and have 3 5-minute conversations in Japanese introducing ourselves. And then I believe we're supposed to teach the first discussion in English. They throw a lot of material at us in class but it's surprisingly easy to pay attention, unlike school. My district came up with a goal of rereading the Book of Mormon by the time we leave the MTC on September 29. I personally hope to finish it by August 10, reading 25 pages a day hopefully. We'll see how that goes.

Love,

Elder Andrew West.

P.S. I'm sending this to Nathan first because his is the only e-mail address I actually know, so please forward it. I'll send any other requests I have in a letter today.Also please mail me. You don't even have to pay for postage with DearElder.com. The MTC president told us a story about how one of his sons didn't send a letter for 3 weeks and his wife was so worried about it. When the letter came, their were 3 letters in it with a little post-it note saying "I saved 2 stamps". So please don't make me save my postage as well. Just kidding, love you, goodbye.

Stop, whoa yeah, wait a minute Mr. Postman

July 16, 2008

Dear Family,

It's late Wednesday night so I'm going to keep this brief. After I left Dad we all filed through a fast paced line going up and down stairs, around corners and in different rooms. We received our room and companion information, a blue card to scan everywhere, a room key, had our pictures taken, and had our immunization records checked. Apparently I'm missing 1 our of 2 MMR shots. he one I'm on record as having was in 2000 so if you can find a record of me having that please mail it to me, and if not please let me know so I can get the shot here.

After that I headed to my residence with me newly received books and then retrieved my luggage as well. I met up with my companion Elder Andrews, he's a nice guy and I look forward to working with him. About an hour later we all went to the chapel for orientation and were told the importance of our companions among other things.

We ate dinner after that and it was delicious. I'll tell you more about it later.

After that the new missionaries all met with our branch presidency (the branches/zones were all separate). Our branch president, President Bird is a wonderful president (we were told never to say "guys"). Him and his counselors and their wives bore their testimonies and welcomed us. After that we all introduced ourselves and bore our testimonies.

I'm going to end my letter here because it's 10:15pm now but not much else happened today.

Love,
Andrew ****

p.s. I should be able to email family on my p-days. My p-days are Tuesday. I'll email Nathan because I know his email address.

Dear Elder,

A gentle nudge, if you will, to get you off and writing.

Sunday is the perfect day to write to a missionary (perhaps Elder Andrew??). Writing a letter is a great way for your son/daughter to work on those valuable writing skills. What? You say your child can't write? No problem. Drawing a picture and sending it is also acceptable. Don't think you have time yourself? No problem, print off a blog entry, journal entry, digital camera picture, whatever.

Don't know the address? No excuses on that one - just look at my sidebar. I will keep his address updated. The current one should be good until near the end of September.

I sent my first letter off on Friday. I have already "nudged" Steve, Alex and Danny to write. When Nathan gets home from the singles ward I will "nudge" him.

Consider yourself "nudged".

Mexican Cupcakes

Saturday night at the movies. In the park. In the dark.

Steve is taking the boys to the free movie in the park. The movie for tonight is Willie Wonka. Stephanie called a couple of hours ago to see if we were going - she's making popcorn, so I said I'd make cupcakes.

I nearly always have cupcake papers - but not today. I do have a dozen silicone cups - but since one box of mix makes 2 dozen cupcakes, I had to do a dozen straight in the pans. Yeah. It was pretty funny to see the difference in shape between the ones in silicone and the ones just in the metal pan. The ones at the front of the picture were in silicone - they look pretty normal to me - but the ones at the back, well, not so much.

Danny looked at the ones in the pan and told me that one of them looked like a sombrero.

Ole.

Food I just had to look up....

Keira and I have been discussing some of the following "treats". They are often referred to in books by a certain author. Most of them just sound weird...but I was curious. It's wonderful to just type a name in Google image and up come samples of the very thing I was wondering about. Having seen the pictures, and in some cases the recipes I don't think I'll be rushing to the kitchen to make them. I strongly suspect they are acquired tastes - maybe if you grew up eating them you would think they were great. I just don't seem to have a great appreciation for British tea time snacks and or desserts.

mince pies....umm, no thanks.
treacle tart.....maybe, maybe not.

Madeira cake....no way.

Lardy cakes.....yeah, no.

Queen of Puddings....now there's one I might give a try.

Elder Andrew at the MTC

Steve dropped Andrew off at the MTC yesterday. Evidently Andrew wasn't quite the first one out the door, but very nearly. I think that bodes well for him.

I got a big kick out of the fact that he (and some other elders) had to use a seam ripper on his suit pocket. The name tags that they use have a strong magnet that hold it on the pocket - but you have to be able to get the back part in your pocket. Steve said he managed to get him to hold still long enough to help him open up the lower pockets too.

I would like the job of handing out seam rippers. I think I may have found my niche.

One More Time!

Keira, Jonah and Laura had dinner with us tonight before heading back to Oregon. During dinner Laura sat out on the deck with Kaith. She and Kaith are only a few months apart in age - and it was nice to hear how well they got along during dinner.

Well, I guess they got along. Laura spent most of dinner singing the same verse of "Old McDonald" over and over again. Occasionally I could hear Kaith joining in. The highlight of this musical interlude was Laura belting out the verse, then, in a loud voice, saying "One more time!!"

Awesomeness Ensued

Goodwill art. Large picture: $6.99. Small picture in corner: $ .69. Framed Kanji over bed. Free.
Totally awesome submarine mirror, bevelled. $3.99

Matching Japanese lanterns: about $1 each. Bulletin board: $2.99. Bamboo chair: free (from Stephanie) + white spray paint and a little fabric for the seat - less than $10. Ugly tie. Free.

Large frames: $3- $6. Wall shelf: $3.99. Vintage "Life" magazine - less than a buck.

Keira's help: Priceless.

Smart Wednesday

I haven't posted lately about doing the NY Times crossword puzzle. I haven't really had time (or inclination) to spend on puzzles. This week I started doing them again. I was really smart on Monday - I could have done it in pen. I was fairly smart on Tuesday - I only had to go back and make a couple of changes. I was smart enough to finish it today - albeit in pencil, with a good eraser. That's pretty good for me - especially after taking a break for a few months. Not sure if I'll attempt the puzzle tomorrow. Not only do I seem to get less smart as the week goes on, but it starts taking up an inordinate amount of time.

Time is a precious thing.

Had a tough time with 28D: Science fair creation, briefly. The answer only had 3 letters, and yeah, I finally got it - but my experience with science fairs (grade school and middle school variety) is that they tend heavily towards models of volcanoes and the solar system - not kids that build a "'bot" - which was the answer. "bot"??? The coolest science fair creation I ever saw- a hover chair. You heard me. Someone mounted a lawn chair on a round piece of plywood, attached rubber skirting to the board, and put what was probably their dad's leaf blower under the chair - pointing down. The darn thing actually worked - although they had to do the demonstrations outside because it was pretty noisy.

Dinner Party for 10..11..12..?

I have no idea how many people were at my house for dinner. Let's see. Me, Nathan, Alex, Danny. Check. Keira, Jonah, Laura. Check. The entire Jones family: Don, Annette, Jacob, Ben, Mitchell, Colby and Logan. Check. Assorted friends (not sure who stayed to eat)....

Keira and I got back from Costco - where I had her put a bag of frozen hamburgers and a bag of buns in the cart. I must have been inspired, that, or the fact that I usually have those things on hand in my freezer all summer. When we got home the Joneses were in our front yard, with mutinous children. Their kids wanted to play with friends, not drive to their hotel to spend the evening. I invited them to dinner.

My recipe for an impromptu dinner party.

• Costco hamburger, buns


• Polish sausage left over from earlier in the week, hot dog buns from the freezer


• frozen curly fries


• frozen corn

I would have had salad too, but on second glance the bag of salad looked just a little past it. My one regret - I didn't have time (or energy) to come up with anything for "afters". It sort of helped that the majority of my guests were teenage boys. They will in fact eat anything.

Eau de Boy

Danny has a friend visiting us. Ben and his family moved out of state about a year and a half ago. We've know the family pretty much since Ben and Danny were born. Ben is a much more social animal than Danny - because he's here, we have another 3 boys visiting. That makes 5 boys that are all around 13 years old (or slightly younger).

I'm not even counting Alex and Nathan.

Yup. Smells like boy at my house.

Getting Back in the Habit

I have felt a little at a loss for the past 3 months. Nathan came home from his mission - thus ending my 2 year habit of weekly letters and emails to him. I didn't always write to him on Sunday, but I always tried to remind Alex to write to him then.

During church today I leaned over to Alex and said, "Next week you get to start writing to Andrew".

I will start this week - we will have Andrew's address on Wednesday - as soon as Steve calls me with his address I'll send Andrew a letter. Excuse me, I'll send Elder Andrew a letter.

Time to get back in the habit. Oh, Happy Day.

Stripping for Dummies

Stripping wallpaper is not that hard. Really. Alex, Nathan and I took down the wallpaper that was covering 2 complete walls in Andrew's old room in about 2 hours. I was very happy that I didn't need to go to Home Depot for any supplies. I even had the gel stuff. I would take a picture, but Steve took my camera to Utah this week.

Tools:

• paper tiger (see picture above)
• plastic scrapers
• wallpaper removing gel
• paint roller (to apply gel)
• paint tray
• screwdriver to remover outlet cover.

Directions:

• show son how fun the paper tiger is to use.
• show other son how easy it is to remove outlet covers.
• roll gel onto a section of the wall (about 4 feet wide)
• show boys how fun it is to pull the paper from the walls...

It's a little like Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence.

"Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to sing it with - and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling wealth. He had, besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spoon cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar-but no dog - the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated window-sash.He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while - plenty of company - and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village."

Anticipation

There is a good side to anticipation. The kind of happy excitement when you're waiting for something that you know will be good. Christmas morning, your first driver's license(before you are jaded about the DMV), waiting for the ketchup to pour for your french fries, children's birthdays, vacations without children....fun stuff.

Then there is the dark slimy underbelly of anticipation. Sitting in a dentist's chair watching the syringe of novacaine move inexorably towards your mouth, having a chemistry test handed to you and realizing that you have no idea what the question are, let alone the answers, waiting for test results to come back from the doctors (like, say, a biopsy result). I was told that I should have my results this coming Monday. Not that I was too worried about them - at least, not yet.

I got back from taking Andrew and Steve to the airport this morning - and noticed that my answering machine was flashing. Yep. The nurse had left me a message that my results were just fine.

Even though I wasn't too worried, I am grateful not to have to wait clear through the weekend. Now I just have to schedule my "mashie" and wait for those results.

Pizza Night

Nathan is a handy guy to have around. Around noon I asked him what he wanted for dinner. We decided on pizza, and he said, "do you want me to start the dough?"

We practically stopped making homemade pizza while he was on his mission. Partly because he wasn't here to start the dough, and partly because Andrew doesn't like homemade pizza.

Andrew and Steve are gone (sniff), Daniel is still at Scout camp, so Alex, Nathan and I will be feasting on homemade pizza tonight. I'll bet we have enough left over for breakfast. Yum.

Epic Packing

It's weird to think about packing all the clothing you plan to wear for two years into 2 suitcases and 1 carry-on. Mind you, the list is of epic proportions, but still - beyond a few new ties and maybe some new socks - this might be Andrew's entire wardrobe until summer 2010.

I know that some airlines are starting to charge fees for luggage - which ones? And do they weigh everything?

It's kind of weird - I haven't flown anywhere since last year (Hawaii, D.C.). I did take the train to Portland a time or two, but frankly taking the train is nothing like flying. No security, no need to check your bags, pretty much as long as you can lug it onto the train, you can take it.

Too bad Andrew can't take the train to Japan.

Fare Thee Well

Andrew is now officially an ordained missionary. We shall now refer to him as "Elder Andrew".

Final packing today - putting away all his treasures to be saved for his return, packing his new wardrobe - into Nathan's old luggage, which if I recall is the same luggage Steve and I took to Europe. This will be some well traveled luggage. I hope they last. We offered to get new luggage, but ultimately he decided that the old ones would do. How very mature.

Steve and Andrew are going down to Tacoma to pick up their suits today. I will finish up last minute laundry - so that Steve can pack for himself tonight (I don't think it has occurred to him yet that HE needs to pack).

Lots to do today. But not so much tomorrow.

I'll be taking Steve and Andrew to the airport at about 6am. That's pretty much it for me. Well, that and stripping Andrew's room (so that it will become Alex's room).

Like Patience on a Monument, or rather, On the Floor

She let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,

Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed!

-Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)

Twice in one year.

I had to take Nathan to the DMV soon after he got home from his mission - because he had misplaced his wallet and needed to get a new license. We waited for over an hour.

I took Andrew and Alex today. It was over 1 1/2 hours of waiting. Sitting on the floor waiting, because although the waiting room is huge, for some reason there are only chairs in the front 1/3 of the room. My only consolation is that at least we took care of two licenses today.

While waiting in line for pictures I got to talking to an older lady in front of us - she mentioned how she had to renew every 5 years. It got me thinking, when does my license expire? Glad I looked - it's next year.

Next year I will have to go and wait in that soul-sucking place yet again.

Don't Worry, Be Happy : )

After my "bibiopsy" yesterday, I had to go pick up a prescription. I don't usually read the document that comes along with prescriptions - you know the one with the fine print that has the laundry list of side effects....Anyway, since Nathan was driving me home I started reading out loud some of the "possible side effects". Most of them were exactly what you would expect: sleepiness, tiredness, dizziness, cough, nausea, vomiting, irritability, diarrhea, constipation, headache, stomach upset, dry mouth...I suspect those side effects are pretty much common. There was one that I just found funny (funny weird).

Worry.

Yup. That was one of the possible side effects. Of course, right after the initial list of possible side effects (which include worry) it says in all capital letters : "CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR AS SOON AS POSSIBLE if you experience..(and then follows another list).. and then right after that it says: "CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY if you experience...(laundry list of side effects number three)....

I don't know, somehow I find it ironic that "worry" is a side effect.

You Will Be Assimilated

Just a note to welcome Stephanie to blogdom. You can link from my site or add a link of your own.

Resistance was futile.

"Great" Uncle Alex

In between running around yesterday, I spent a few hours at home. Stephanie and Cory both had eye doctor appointments, so I volunteered to be crowd control.

I really don't make my grandkids sit together on a blanket - I put baby Sterling down on a blanket with some toys and his siblings all sat down with him. I'm thinking maybe I should encourage the blanket sitting thing....it's easier to keep an eye on them when they are all in one spot. Of course, since it's summer vacation I almost always have at least one other set of eyes to help out and yesterday was no exception. Alex is a great uncle - always willing to take time out of his "schedule" to play with his nephews and niece. He spent time outside with them, then played with toys and found a board game to play. He will make someone an awesome husband (and father) some day.

Did I mention he also does dishes?

Performance Art?

It's Monday and we're off and running with a vengeance. This was one of those days that made me wish for a second car. Our one and only was in constant use starting at 6:30 am (Dropping Danny and a friend off for Scout camp), dropping Nathan off at the college at 7:30, Andrew taking the van at 8:45 to pick up Steve and go missionary shopping, 4:35 Andrew and Steve got home ($1,700 poorer) 4:40 left to pick up Nathan from work, home at 5:30 (after making a stop at Safeway to pick up milk) - Nathan then left 15 minutes later to go to singles FHE.

Tomorrow should be better....at least, that's my hope. I just hope our running around isn't as pointless as this.

Alter Ego(s)

These were the alternative to the "Elliot Gould" glasses Danny kept picking out. I kind of like these, but I'm not sure Steve has quite grown accustomed...

Be on the lookout for this strange woman. A hidden camera (in the loo) was able to capture a picture of this anonymous woman who was recently seen reading in bed with my husband. He was attempting to "chat her up".

Sign of the Times

Nathan left a note on the fridge this morning. I'm not sure if he wrote it to remind himself or others. Either way, it worked.

Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey Wimey Stuff

"People don't understand time. It's not what you think it is. It's complicated. Very complicated. People assume time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

-Dr. Who (episode: Blink)

Time doesn't seem to move in a straightforward linear progression. Especially when it's almost time to send out a missionary.

Andrew will be gone in less than 6 days. Tomorrow is the last day that Daniel will see him for 2 years. It will be longer for David and possibly much longer for Alex.

Blink and he's gone.

Thrifty Art

I've been looking around for some Japanese inspired decorations/art for Alex's new bedroom. Totally scored at Goodwill. Handpainted picture $6.99. It's quite large - about 2 foot by 4 foot.

Now that we have our inspiration piece, we'll go from here.

Stars and Stripes Forever

You have to love a song that allows a wimpy little instrument like the piccolo to shine. As a former flute player (and very occasionally a piccolo player) I love it.

Happy 4th of July.