Just another ordinary day

Okay so this is going to be a bit of a departure from all the other blogs out there telling you everything they are thankful for...but surely not a departure from my other blog posts. Thanksgiving is not really one of my favorite holidays. In fact, all things considered, I wish it didn't exists. I wish it were just another ordinary day. Maybe this year is a bit worse since I don't feel great and Max has entered a really ANNOYING phase lately. He has to talk constantly and is always in my personal space demanding attention. So first off I hate that because of the holiday preschool was canceled taking away my few hours away from him. (Not that I begrudge his teacher.) So here we have a whole day where nothing is open, no where to go, but a whole day of Max. Then there is the meal, which in my opinion is way more work then the payoff. Lastly it is just a lonely long day, like a really long Sunday. I am either busy cooking a meal I am not that jazzed about, bored to death watching Max play video games, or annoyed by Max as he pesters me. I just wish it were an ordinary day.

*a side note....I do get invited down to Little Rock by my lovely Aunt Mardie each year, and we sometimes go, but 4 hours each way is a long drive with Mae. Perhaps the holiday wouldn't be bad if we lived close to family. Alas the one flaw to Arkansas.

*I do not want to see any comments about how we should have just flown to Utah! I do not want to spend any day of my life watching my kids get molested so the federal government can look like they are doing something and thereby improve their public image instead of actually doing something useful like racial profiling.

Gerber House Party

I guess it is time to blog again. So I have been a bit preoccupied by other things lately. A few weeks ago I was picked to host a House Party. For those unaware, house parties are where companies basically send you a ton of free stuff and ask you to throw a party using it. I attended a Fisher Price one a bit ago and there were all the new toys for the kids to play with and we even got to take a toy home. It was great cause there is no pressure to buy anything. No sales pitch, no catalogues. Just free stuff. So when I saw there was going to be a Gerber party I signed up. About a week ago I was sent two HUGE packages full of free food and goodies. Friday morning I invited some friends with small children, babies, and those going to have more babies. (yeah, I didn't invite everyone. How could I? Do you know how many women in those categories I could have invited? The fire Marshall would have had to stop by. If you didn't get an invite, I am sorry. I just kinda picked randomly.)



The kiddos seemed to have have fun playing with all Max's toys. The ladies seemed to have a good time eating and chatting. My friend Tia, who is pregnant with her first, came and I hope we regaled her with good stories and info. Others have been sharing their scary stories with her.



After last week I think the best part of the party was that I did not stress about it. I decided that it was really no big deal and I didn't really need Jeff to texture and paint the dining room for one party. As funny as it sounds working hard not to stress actually made it more enjoyable.



So hooray for free stuff!


This picture was not actually mine, I was too lazy, (or not stressing,) to take a photo. But it does show a lot of the stuff we got.

Bad Timing

So I would have to admit that my day to day life is fairly free of excessive scheduling. Which is a fancy way of admitting that I don't usually have a lot going on. This month has been quite the exception. This weekend was a definite exception. Friday I was lucky to have my cousin Joe, his wife Teriney, and their three adorable children come up an visit from Little Rock. (Now for those of my readers who happen to think that Little Rock is close by, that would be like saying St. George is close to Odgen.) So visits usually only happen once a year. Teriney and I had a super fun day just hanging with the kids and then everyone came over for dinner. Now Saturday I had quite a day planned. I was supposed to teach two classes at Super Saturday. One class on gift wrapping, (I used to do this at Dillards, so I know how to make really big bows.) and the other on pie making. After that we were going to take my family up to Tanyard Creek, a really pretty little hike and waterfall and then get some Thai food. BIG BIG DAY! I was excited though. So here comes 4:30 a.m and well to save you the gruesome details I was in the bathroom the rest of the morning. (Poor Jeff probably had legal grounds for divorce after that night.) So all my fun plans were dashed. I did get a bit of relief when I found out that it was not my cooking that made me sick, and no one else got sick. So not only did I not get to have another great day with my cousin and his family, but I had to bail on the Relief Society and look like a total loser/flake! Why did this happen? Like I said, I am not a busy person, so I kinda feel like maybe there was a reason why this happened. But what could it be? Humility? Maybe, but I am not sure about that cause it wasn't so much embarrassing as much as I just felt like I let everyone down and now they either think ill of me or have their prior ill feeling once again confirmed. I don't want to be the shining star of my ward, I just kinda wanna fade into the background. It is hard for me to tone myself down. Believe it or not, I have been trying for a bit, but I feel like life keeps throwing me into situations where I have less of a chance to fade. Maybe it was just really bad timing. It was funny being at church today cause I kept seeing all these people I let down and on the one hand I wanted to say I was sorry, but on the other hand, why should I apologize for being sick. I was actually torn about apologizing, cause then I would have been admitting that there was something I could have done about it. Which there wasn't. I am sorry that things turned out the way they did. I'm not really responsible, (right now I am placing the blame on the Taco Bell by the Promenade,) but I am sorry things didn't turn out. Hell I am sorry that my day was screwed. I was gonna have fun. Next weekend is kinda big too; I wonder how it will turn out?

Trick or Treat

We surprised a lot of our neighbors by trick or treating this year. People in Bella Vista just don't trick or treat due to many factors, the lack of sidewalks, the steep hills, and the fact that it started out as a retirement community. Most people were nice and even excited to see the kids. We also went to Jeff's work and did a trick or treat around the cubicles, which is not terrible fun. The building is basically a converted warehouse of cubicles and it is jammed packed with kids. We skipped the ward party cause I am still really pissed that after last years PERFECT small trunk or treat, they would attach it to the lame chili cook off again and force all the kids to stay up past midnight to trunk or treat. (Okay maybe not that late.) I am sorry, but my kids are in bed by eight. Anyhoo...we had a good Halloween and Max was super cute. He was supposed to be Buzz Lightyear, but then a couple days before I went to TJMaxx and they had a Anakin Skywalker costume for 2 dollars since the mask and belt were missing. I bought it and made a belt out of an old bleached black sock of mine that was missing a partner. See it pays to never toss socks! Buzz can wait til next years since it was a bit too big. I got a lot of good Twix out of the holiday so really it was a good weekend.

Waaaaaaa!

Caution some ugly whining is about to commence.

I MISS T.V. and I am not too ashamed to say it! It has been over two months now that we have gotten rid of our satellite and I am still not used to it.

I feel like a smoker trying to quit after a lifetime of smoking. Seriously I am not one of those sweet Molly Mormons who was never allowed to watch t.v., or even a normal kid who could only watch say, an hour a day. I grew up watching hours upon hours a day. (Not to make my parents sound like bad parents, I think it is more a case of the research not being out about how bad it is for a kid. Like how they didn't used to make six year olds sit in booster seats.)

I get the shakes bad. Some times I just want to flip on the tube and watch mindless Friends reruns. But no, I am at the mercy of Netflix and Hulu Plus, (which sucks by the way.) There is something stressing and depressing about knowing that you had to make a serious effort to choose the crap that you are watching.

Yes, we do have a patch. We stream netflix to our PlayStation and can watch stuff over the Internet. We even got an antenna a week ago that gives us access to Fox, NBC, and some weird local channel that only shows t.v. shows from the 60's and 70's.

A few things I have learned from this experience.

You can only watch so many episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress," before wedding dresses become unspecial and boring.

Masterpiece Theater existed before I starting watching it in 2006, and it is awesome, but I am still not going to contribute like "viewers like me." (especially since I can't even get PBS)

You can miss something you never watched. And by this I mean now that I don't have ESPN anymore I suddenly want to watch college football. There have been several games I have wanted to watch this year. Last year we had so many ESPN and sport channels and had taken them all out of our flipping rotation.

Only good thing from this experience.

Well besides the money we are saving.

Max is very cutely confused by the mail Netflix. Max loves to get the mail and will even get bugged if you get it before him. He gets terribly confused when he puts the red Netflix envelope in the mail box, and then sees it returned two days. Mean as this makes me sound I crack up every time he get upset over this. Yes, I have tried to explain, but he forgets and doesn't really understand.

Have to Have

Sometimes in life you see something you just have to have. I saw this clock in Garden Design Magazine. At $495, it is not gonna be mine unless I win powerball. But how awesome is it? I love that the bird comes out at the hour except at night cause of a light sensor. I can't remember the last time I saw something I so adored that was totally out of my price budget. Oh Well. Maybe it is good for me to want something I can't have. Seems like frequently I have just bought the things I want, even if I didn't need them, cause they didn't cost that much. This will be a good lesson is self control, and taming my desires.

All Our Dead

Some random musings from church.

I love love love the song, "High On A Mountain Top," but I hate that it ends on the word dead. I don't think any song should end on the word dead. Even though it is a "happy dead," really no dead is a good dead. It's like a really good meal that leaves a bad aftertaste.

For once we had a good combined 5th Sunday meeting and it was all about being good visiting/home teachers. I could improve for sure, and so could Jeff, but I gotta say I'd bet a thousand bucks that our home teachers that we have had for like three years couldn't tell you my kids names. I always get above average visiting teachers though.

So my freshman high school English teacher was a real jerk! I hated this class and the teacher but one day he said something that I always think about. He was an avid people watcher and pointed out that if you watch people you tend to notice that more often then not the listener isn't really listening at all but just waiting to say their part. I have noticed this in others and myself. I am so so guilty of this at times. I recently had a very important conversation with someone in my ward, "(or at least I thought it was important,) and I gotta say that as I was listing my concerns I could see this firm steel wall in this ladies eyes. She was not listening to me at all. She knew what she was gonna say and was not hearing me at all. I almost wish she would have said that from the beginning, but that would have been really rude.

I love the classic lines of our church building, over all it is a lovely building where the Spirit is in abundance, but I need to be honest and say I really hate that Burgundy color of all the benches and seats.

Tee hee hee. I have brought treats for the Library the past few weeks and today when the Bishop came in he said I was magnifying my calling.

My friend Krista teaches Relief Society once a month and it is becoming my favorite week of the month. Her lessons are so touching without any gimmicks or tears. I feel really blessed to have her as a teacher since I am not getting to much out of Sacrament Meeting and I end up in the Library for much of Sunday School.

Mae goes into Nursery in March. I have been counting down for a year now.

Arg! So we now have sisters instead of elders and I want to have them over for dinner, but they don't pass around the calender anymore. Now I was told by the sisters this is because they were in such high demand that the calender was getting full before it got around. Okay, fair enough, but the solution was that the ward mission leaders wife now controls the dinners. NOT COOL! I have to call this chick up and what be deemed worthy to fill a slot? This is WAY WEIRD! It kinda reminds me of last Christmas when we had signed up to feed the elders on Christmas Eve and then got booted very rudely by another family who had a tradition of feeding the elders on Christmas Eve. Yeah well if it was that important then they should have signed up first! We were totally dumped by the elders to accommodate this family. Yeah I am still way mad. But anyway, I feel this is really uncomfortable and so I will probably not get to feed the sisters while they are here, which is sad cause I really loved having them here.

I hate when people ask me to cut strips of paper for them with the paper cutter. I have a HUGE phobia of paper cutters. My parents worked with a family business for many years durning my childhood and we were often in the office. My mom made a big deal about how dangerous they were and well, it stuck. Does anyone else remember a Josh Harnett horror movie called The Faculty? Well I didn't see it, but I remember the trailer where someone grabbed the blade off of one of those things and used it all machette like. I can't use them. If you need something cut please come and do it yourself.