Happy Thanksgiving

bubble bath

The black handle of a small mirror slipped from his hand and crashed onto the hard tile floor. He looked up expectantly, shards of glass now surrounding him. His mother looked over from the computer table where she sat. "Sorry, my dear boy! It's a rough go being only two and a half, but you've just signed yourself up for seven years of horrid luck! Well, carry on!"



Having bubbles on hand do wonders at getting a small boy into the bath. Not so much for the sake of the bath, because he likes those. No, it's more for the opportunity of getting him out of his diaper, well used after a night's sleep, and into another one. Hooray for the bubble bath!

He did break a mirror this morning as well. I'm not British, though, so the above paragraph really has nothing to do with my life, except for the small boy and the broken mirror. But I'm hoping the bubble bath neutralizes the bad luck. I'm pretty sure it will. It wasn't a bad break. Easy to clean up and all.

Although his sister was quite disappointed, as the mirror was hers. The cure for such disappointment? Yes, I think it must be: bubble bath.

chairs on tables

The past weekend had its ups and downs.

Ben kindly bought me a massage. It was rather lovely. Massages are really nice things. When I got back he asked me how it was. It was good, I replied. Because it was good. But not great? he asked. And, well, no. It wasn't great. The masseuse did a decent job, but the room was a tad chilly and it's hard to relax your muscles when you're a little cold. And then Ben said he had a better masseuse for a better price and I thought he was joking, but it turns out he's not. Ben is very resourceful that way. But really, the next paid massage in our family should be for Ben and not for me, because he could use it. Although if you insisted, I wouldn't say no...

Of course the massage was some what compromised by the tension my body imbibed by watching the BYU / Utah game Saturday night. It was a little sad, and our quarterback, to whom I am distantly related, had a bad night. No really. A BAD NIGHT. Oh well. I am not one of those fans to disown their team for the occasional disappointing performance. Actually I have stuck by my team through many bad and questionable seasons, and this season was not one of them. We have done a pretty dang good job. And if you are one of those "fans" who don't actually support our team except when they are perfect in every way, don't come over to my house. I might punch you in the face, because I am rather tired of you.

On Saturday I also came up with a 5 point cleaning plan so that I can come home from our Thanksgiving trip to Las Vegas to a sparkling house. I mean, December starts a week from today!!!! That means Christmas and decorations, and so I am going to be a crazy mean cleaning machine. Well, I might actually not have the energy for that, but I am going to try. Because. Well, you know why. Especially if you run a household around the holidays. What are the 5 points? Well, I can't really say. The Cleaning Plan just sounded more official that way.

And all of our chairs now have semi-permanent residence on top of our table or countertop so that Camille, the mountaineer, can not scale them up to the roof top. Because she would if she could.

1 day 7 hours 26 minutes & 35 seconds until kickoff {!}

I really kind of like this.




But you do know this picture is for laughs, right? Kind of a tongue in cheek sort of chuckle.

Right? {click on it if you want a better look...}

Some around here call it The Holy War, a moniker I am uncomfortable with, but the national media have picked up on it and so the name sticks. It's always the last game of the regular season schedule. It's a rivalry of the most intense kind. The kind of game that has me yelling at the t.v. and standing up on the couch with my arms in the air. Oh, wait. That's me at all the games. But especially this game.

Oh my.

This year we play the game away from home....which, given past results, is not necessarily a bad thing: both teams know how to go into the other's house and school them.

So while that photoshopped image is all in good fun, you do know that I definitely bleed blue.



Oh, yes. I do.

scary toilets

She had a nightmare the other night. Something about toilets. I can't be sure exactly what it was, but for now she is afraid to flush. She's not exactly thrilled about going into the bathroom either, but at five she realizes the necessity. Fortunately for all of us the first baby step we have taken towards potty-training her younger brother is letting him experience the joy of flushing! Woohoo! So he takes care of that part.

See, everything just works out, doesn't it.

eclectic planitary musings on a monday morning

Do you ever wonder what exactly happened to bring these celestial spheres together?

So bizarre.

Seriously, the earth is pretty dang small compared to Jupiter and Saturn. And Neptune and Uranus, what sort of status do they have? I bet they have their own club or something. You have to be a nice shade of blue, maybe.

So there's Jupiter, glaring at everybody with his big red eye. Jupiter always seemed like a scary planet to me. And then I learned that he was supposed to be a star, like the sun, and didn't have quite enough oomph to get there, and since then I've always felt a little sad for him. But grateful, because if he had made it, I wouldn't be here. I don't deal well with the heat. But Jupiter is nice for the Greek tragedy that every solar system needs.

And how about Saturn. Fancy! That's what I say. There's always someone in the bunch who always looks good, and that's Saturn. Very elegant, for a planet. Maybe like Jane Fairfax, I don't know. And I feel bad for Mercury, burning hot on one side and freezing cold on the other. Hard life.

Of course, Pluto is the one who really has it tough. Being demoted from planetary status and all. Except one day that status may return, with other like beings that will be promoted to planet status as well.

After writing down these musings I can see that somewhere I have developed quite a sense of planetary sympathy. Who knows why? These things happen and then there they are. That's pretty much all I can make of it.

TGIM? ~ or, ignore this. it's not cheerful.

Last week was a pretty crappy week. It was full of the normal life-pounding stress that accompanies us each week, along with spousal disappointments and disappointings (both sides contributing), pre-holiday navigations, high strung children, a baby with a newly found love of climbing dangerously to the tip of whatever is available whenever I turned around, all with a round of colds for everyone! cheers! I found myself really ticked off a few times over the course of the week and in tears a few times as well - both influenced by hormones I'm sure, but still: very unusal for me. It was a week where my strengths were seeming like weaknesses, and my weaknesses were worse. In short, it sucked.

Yesterday, I left church in tears, which sounds more dramatic than it was. Because my two little babes with colds couldn't go to nursery I had planned to take them home after the main meeting anyway. What I had hoped for, what I absolutely needed after the crazy and chaos of the week, was to be able to sit in Sacrament Meeting and just Be for a few minutes. I needed a chance to spiritually collect myself as I hadn't managed to do it all week between being angry, tired and yelling at my children (funny how that takes the good feelings just right out of your heart). Sigh. It was not to be.

My sweet daughter acted up immediately. I took her into the foyer. We were immediately followed by her brother and his blankie and his desire to run as fast as he could up and down the halls of the church. They were loud. They were noisy. They were incredibly disruptive. It was perfectly emblematic of the entire week: I was completely incapable of doing what I knew I needed and wanted to be doing. It was absolutely beyond me, just like the solutions to everything else that were weighing on me. I was overwhelmed and exhausted. And so I left crying. Which was good, because I needed the release.

Sunday did improve itself. I'm really hoping that the rest of this week follows suit.

this kid is funny

My son comes tearing into the family room, running past the couch and onto the rug where he throws himself to the ground.

"I just ringing round the rosies" he says with his emergent matter-o -fact two year-old language.

I love that kid. He cracks me up.

what if...

"What if I was eating these smores and my face got all messy and the King of England was here?" my oldest queried.

And honestly, I had no answer to that.

really , no time for nostalgia

Wow.
This was a birthday that lasted a l l d a y l o n g... and by the end you could tell.

It started with preschool in the morning, with the requisite birthday treats, followed by house cleaning, followed by a trip to the store for party supplies (with Oliver screaming his head off the entire time), followed by party prep and more house cleaning (where, mercifully, both Camille and Oliver fell asleep on the way home from the store, and therefore were willing to nap for a long time), followed by party (!), followed by dinner chosen by the birthday girl, and then solidly rejected, in fact, by the very same birthday girl when it came time to eat, followed by the family party, followed by ice cream and cake with Nana, Grandpa, and some uncles and an aunt. It was a lot. Probably too much. But Five is a Big Deal. I can especially tell that by the state of utter disarray my house is in. But the cake (a collaboration between Ben and myself: he bakes it, I decorate it) turned out nicely and that always makes me happy, even if the house is a mess in the end.

the birthday girl at her party

the cake, top view

the cake, side view

family party ~ showing off the art set

mad dash

Birthday party here in about 2.5 hours for my newly minted 5 year old. Am I ready? Hahahahahahhahahahahahaaaaaa! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I'll let you know how it goes. Later.

silent as a giraffe? except they have mouths

Yesterday while working on a puzzle: "Mom, how does Hello Kitty talk? Maybe with her nose?"

a nap is a good idea

They're reporting that after a trip to the gym, President-Elect Barack Obama went back to work today to try and figure out how he's going to run the country. And really, I'm all for hard work and all, but in this day and age, with campaigns that last years and years, it seems to me that the day after a national election should be a national day of sleep. Who's with me on this?

I voted

And I even gently challenged the lady at the polling place who said I needed to show a photo I.D. in order to vote. (I didn't. And neither would anybody else in line, so I saved them the hassle.) My! I feel so politically active this morning!

We're having a little election party here tonight. You know, streamers, balloons, food, NBC, CNN, and NPR! So now I need to go and clean my house. And as for you...

Get out there and vote!

Happy Election Day!

bewildered but productive

I love the time change in the fall. I get up the same time my body has been getting up for the past 6+ months, but I have an ENTIRE EXTRA HOUR on my hands to be productive! And I was. And so were the kids. More or less.

I always have a few moments of "wait- what time is is???? though, when double checking clocks that haven't been changed with clocks that have been changed . When I dropped Ella off at preschool this morning I had to think through the time on the dashboard and the NPR show playing on the radio, almost convinced I was an hour late. But I wasn't. And so that was good.
Whew!

Of course, right now Camille is getting good and ready to take her nap, but I'm going to need to keep her up until after preschool. Which will mean nap time is an hour later than normal. This could be tricky. And one of the downsides to changing the time around.

Also, when it gets to be the late afternoon and I realize Ben won't be home for another hour, that will be a downside, too. A bummer, one could say. Hmmm.

That extra hour in the morning feeling must be worth a lot to me, I guess.

a president by any other name

* This is from something I wrote this a little over four years ago, after President Ronald Reagan died, and a few months before the 2004 election. It seemed appropriate to post it today. If you haven't already (and of course you have, right?) do your homework tonight, and tomorrow - Go Vote!

~

In 1980 I was five years old. That fall I started kindergarten. Ronald Reagan was elected president. Along the main hallway of my elementary school there is a line of presidential portraits. On my first day of school, there was Jimmy Carter, situated at the end of the celebrated line. We would walk past him on the way to the library.

A few months into the school year the picture at the end of the line was different. I remember feeling satisfied that President Reagan had decided to grace the wall of our school. I felt I liked him better than Carter. But what did I know? I was five. I knew that there was a President of the United States, but I didn’t really know who he was, until it was Ronald Reagan.

Election night 1984, now nine years old, I have a distinct memory of sitting alone on the couch in the living room. The T.V. was turned to the election coverage. My parents were out, my brother and sisters asleep. But I was there, fascinated as I watched the states slowly turning red across the U.S. map. In the end, way past my bedtime, there were 49 red states, and one blue.

Victory. I was interested in politics.

Ronald Reagan died last Saturday. Several memorials are going on throughout the country this week. Friday is a National Day of Mourning and the Congressional Republican Leadership have suspended their regular business in order to spent the rest of the week eulogizing the man who, according to the experts on the radio, revitalized the Republican party and changed the face of American politics. I heard that yesterday no Democrats had participated. How partisan of them. I did wonder at taking the entire week off.

I am an independent, no capitals. I get a kick out of the signs around my town encouraging citizens to “vote the person, not the party.” Which I agree with, except that the party has something to do with things.

I am still thinking over my presidential vote. It's something certainly worth thinking over. But however things go, and however I vote in this upcoming election, I have to thank Mr. Reagan. He sparked my interest. I haven’t been as involved as maybe I should be, but I have been involved and I am interested.

Goodnight, Ronald. It’s been good knowing you.