Spikes.

Mark came home on Monday sporting a new hair cut. The stylist gave him "summer" short cut and gelled him up with some spikes. He thought he was beyond cool. He kept touching the stiff peaks in his hair, making sure they were still there, and asking me if had seen the spikes in his hair. I assured him I had seen the spikes and they were very cool.

On Tuesday morning he demanded that I style his hair with spikes like his stylist. Nothing short of spikes would satisfy him. Gel I did not have, but I did have some moose. So moose it was, and he was just as proud of my "do" as what the stylist had done. He said "this is the best hair day ever."

Only problem moose does not last as long as gel....will be getting some gel....next thing you know he is going to have a girlfriend...so NOT ready for that.

Froot Loops

To this day there is no smell I enjoy more than opening a new box of Froot Loops and inhaling the fruity smell. It magical, its yummy, its wonderful. I makes me feel 8 years old. As a child growing up I would frequently spend time with my Grandma Hales when my parents went out of town. My mother would never buy sugar cereals, but you could ALWAYS count on grandma to dish out the good stuff, and one of the good stuff staples was Froot Loops.

I would come down in the morning to fully dressed breakfast table, again a novelty for me, my mother and a fully dressed breakfast table, I don't think so.... Awaiting my arrival would be bowl of Froot Loops just in need of little milk. Don't worry this milk was not poured from a jug into my cereal bowl, no at at grandma's house. It went from the jug to a small breakfast milk pitcher, and then to my awaiting bowl of cereal, making it even more special. (I am quite sure that none of my cousins received the same treatment as me. I was grandma's favorite, I just know it.)

Grandma would always try to convince me I wanted some eggs, bacon or pancakes with that cereal, but I would have none of that. It was more cereal for me. Besides in my mind eggs, bacon and pancakes were dinner food, not breakfast food.

Finally after indulging my self in a minimum of two bowls of the sugary treat, I would be full and the roof of my mouth sore. You have to get Froot Loops good and soggy in order to avoid the hard crunch of the cereal tearing up the tender roof of your mouth. I was usually too anxious to eat my yummy treat that couldn't wait for the cereal to soak up the milk.

But I still enjoyed every delicious bowl.

Road Trip!

Road Trip! This last weekend Lauren and I headed to St. George for a dance competition. It was very short trip, we left on Friday after Lauren got out of school, she competed Saturday morning, and we were back in the car heading home by Saturday afternoon.

The car is packed.

Lauren has her DVD player, and candy, she is all set.

Of course we arrived in time to do a little shopping.

We hit Old Navy for flip flops.

Lauren chose Subway for dinner. And actually breakfast too, we ordered foot longs, ate one half and saved the other half for breakfast. (We had a refrigerator in our hotel room.)

Lauren and the ballroom team warming up.

Lauren and the hip hop team warming up.

Woo Hoo! We got a trophy! (Ok, it was a participation trophy, and everyone got one...)

These are the trophies the girls actually won!

Another reason to love spring...

It is a little know fact that a good majority of decorations used in my girls rooms were actually intended for Easter/spring decor, but were repackaged by me for a new use. This weeks craft was one of those items.

This is a decoration I made for Lauren's bathroom. These are mini-wreaths I picked up at my favorite place, Tai Pan Trading. The intended use for the wreath is over a long tapered candle, as a candle wreath. Each wreath was $1.57. I added the ribbon, hot glued it together, and gathered sticks from the trees in my yard, and slipped the ribbon over the sticks.

Its stylish and cute!

Just the little things.

My Uncle John sent me an email on Sunday with a link to this youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8FdW0diox4

Sunday was the conclusion for me, of what had been a particularly challenging week, that left me with a lot of self doubt. The Lord in his infinite wisdom decided I needed to be whacked over the head a few times on Sunday to be reminded he does love me. This video was one of a number of whackings I received.....

I got the point. No more whacking necessary.

You know you are in Utah County when.....

You know you are in Utah County when you are sitting in the waiting room at the doctors office, and the waiting room music is cheesy versions of church hymns......

Novices no more, kind of....

It official, Lauren and I are no longer dance competitions novices, having put our first competition behind us on Saturday. With Lauren making her company dance team this year for both ballroom and hip hop, it means competitions in the spring. ( I have to admit had I SEEN the competition schedule BEFORE I let her audition for the teams, I might have thought twice about it. And her schedule as a 9 year old is NOTHING compared to what I have to look forward to in the future.....)

The competition was Friday and Saturday in Bountiful, but fortunately for us Lauren's team only preformed on Saturday. Did I mention her call time was Saturday at 8:30 a.m.???? Hello? I live in Utah county, which means we had to get up at 6:30, to be ready to leave by 7:30, all on a Saturday morning. (Again should this not have been disclosed PRIOR to me allowing her to audition???)

We arrived, she practiced, she preformed, then she had to wait....she did not like the waiting part... Awards were at 12:30. Her team won an "Ruby" award, which don't even ask me what that means, they tried to explain the award system at the beginning, but I got totally lost. Next dance competition I am going to cozy up to one of the more experienced mothers, and start in with a barrage of dance competition questions, in an effort to education myself about this process, because while having one competition under our belt does not in anyway mean I have a clue what is going on. This might be more complicated than practicing law......

I am so sick of my winter clothes....

Spring fever....I have it bad. For me spring fever manifests itself in new clothes. By now I am completely sick of my winter clothes, I am sick of long selvees, heavy material, socks, and big clunky winter shoes. The heaviness that is winter, seems overbearing come about March.

What do I want? Sundresses, sandals, and flip flops. I started with the dresses.....

The Before.

The After.

I found the pre-gathered material at JoAnn's, and set about trying to find a skirt material to coordinate. I found this black linen fabric where the white ribbon was already sewed onto it in cool flower design. It turned out darling.

And the beauty of this dress, it is the perfect transition from winter to spring. The first time I wore the dress it was a rather chilly March Sunday, so I had to pair the dress with a long sleeve shirt, tights and my winter shoes, but give me about 6 weeks, and this dress was have a fresh spring look, with a short sleeve shirt, and these totally hot black and white sandals I have.....oh I can't wait!

Random questions...by Mark.

The other day I was a few minutes early to pick Lauren up from school so I picked up my iphone to entertain myself. After catching up on my email, facebook, and checking the weather, I decided I should delete a bunch of old notes I had to remind me of things and dates that I had already passed.

In the process of cleaning out my notes I discovered this question Mark had posed to me, that I found clever enough to write down.

"They had a big sidewalk sale? Is that where they buy the sidewalk?"

Ummmm........ not exactly.

Old tool, new use.

I have Dish Network. I love Dish Network. I love my programing. I love my DVR. I don't love it when it snows. When it snows, and my exterior dish, reaches critical mass regarding snow build up, I loose reception. When this happens I have two choices. Wait until the snow melts and reception will naturally return, or take matters into my own hands to speed in the snow removal and the return of my fine TV viewing experience.

I opt for #2. Now my dish is located on the roof of my house, not exactly easy for snow removal, and well lets face it, I am not tall. Necessity really is the mother of invention.....I discovered this winter that if I take my three foot ladder outside, stand on the top run, and then take my feather duster with the handle that extends to ridiculous lengths, I can successfully and safely remove snow. Just a little light dusting, and TV viewing has returned!

Plastic Bags

I am so old. I so old that I recall when grocery stores made the switch from paper to plastic. I PAINFUL recall this change, you see I was a bagger in a grocery store when management mandated that plastic be the bag of choice unless the customer specifically requests paper.

Plastic bags are a challenge when it comes to bagging. Paper bags have natural walls to support items. Plastic bags do not. There is a fine art to bagging in plastic. First you must take items such as cereal boxes and build walls on the side and then in the middle you can place items such as produce that do not lend themselves well to wall building, but then become supported with the cereal boxes. Its not difficult to bag in plastic, it only requires that you plan your bag carefully. (Cantaloupes are the exception to that rule. There is simply no way to bag a cantaloupe in a plastic bag. The best you can do is put 2-3 in a bag, depending on the size, and tie the bag at the top. Failure to place a knot at the top of the bag results in cantaloupes having a tour of your car as you drive home.)

I usual do my weekly grocery shopping at a store known as Macey's. They are local to Utah, have good sales, understand the Mormon shopping mentality, (ie, food storage), and for the most part have good customer service. That is until it comes to bagging in plastic.....

I am asked each week if I would like paper or plastic. I figure when it comes to being green it probably about a toss up, because I recycle both. My natural instinct says bag in plastic, because it was drilled into my mind, during my youth as a grocery bagger, how much more expensive the paper bag is to the store. (Yes I have considered going completely green and bringing my own bags, but right now with my crazy life having the responsibility to bring the bags to the store, and then remember to bring the bags INTO the store from the car, might send me over the edge mentally.) So I allow them to bag in plastic.

Grrrrrr......apparently today's teenage baggers are not forced to watch endless videos of how to correctly bag in a plastic bag, because at my local Macey's I have yet to meet a bagger who has any concept of building walls in bags. Their idea of bagging is to mindlessly throw items into the plastic bag. Now I could probably live with that, but my bigger issue is they only place 2-3 items in each bag, and if it is meat, each meat items gets its own separate bag, despite the fact that I have individually wrapped each meat item with a bag from the meat department. Now because I grocery shop only once a week, I usually have a pretty full cart of groceries, which means when I come home from the grocery store it is basically no different from coming home from Costco. I am hauling in individual items, only with more plastic.

Now I am not one to sit back and let life, or rather teenager baggers, control my grocery shopping destiny. So I began asking the baggers to place more than 2-3 items in the plastic bag and fill up the plastic bag. I have asked to have all my meat placed into one bag. They can't do it. It is impossible for them to place more than 3 items in any given bag, despite my instruction. I have showed them how I want my groceries bagged, to no avail. Finally I requested paper. For some reason they are capable of placing more than 2-3 items in a paper bag, that is IF you can get them to bag in paper. 4 out of 5 times I am asked my bag preference, and I say paper, which is completely disregarded, and everything ends up in endless amounts of plastic sacks. It is a battle I am loosing, or rather have lost.

But alas there is hope in site. I noticed several months ago a rather large building being built near where I get on the interstate, which is only a mile from the Macey's I frequent. I wondered on more than one occasion what was being built. About 10 days ago a sign appeared on the building which said "WinCo." My bagging prayers have been answered, not only will I continue to get low prices on my food, I get to put those bagging skills of mine to use, and now all complaints about bagging will be taken in house!

Coasters

I completely stole this idea from Arianne. There, now you know my secret to good crafting, stealing from others. I am really good at it. And least you think Arianne is above me is the art of craft thievery, she stole this idea from a blog on Mod Podge projects. What are we making? Coasters.

Here are the supplies, blank ceramic tiles, purchased for .16 a piece at Home Depot. Cute scrapbook paper, and Mod Podge, both the regular kind, and the kind (purple bottle) that dries with a hard coat. Finally, felt.

Cut your scrapbook paper to the size of your tile.

Glue the scrapbook paper on the to the tile with the regular Mod Podge. Once it dries, cover the top of the tile with 2-3 coasts of the hard drying Mod Podge.

Cut felt squares the same size as the tile, and glue the felt squares onto the bottom of the tile. I used Elmer's glue.

Bundle your coasters into a pack of 4, and tie with a cute ribbon. I plan on giving these to the sisters I visit teach, but Arianne used them as thank you gifts for her friends who hosted her baby shower. The total cost for the the four coasters, about a dollar.

7:00 p.m.

This is what 7:00 p.m. looks like on any given night at my house.....

Lauren is on the floor with her butt in the air practicing break dance moves. This one is known as the "baby freeze." Don't ask me why...

Mark and Katie are building pillow slides from the ottoman to the floor, and then competing in contest to see who can be the first to sustain serious injury due to out of control sliding, jumping and rough housing.

By request.....

On Monday morning Mark informed me that a picture of "Hiro" needed to be on my blog. Hiro is the latest edition to his ever growing Thomas the Tank Engine collection. Hiro joined the family about two weeks ago, and since then has been making friends with the other engines, trying to say out of Katie's sticky little fingers, and is fortunate enough to have me put him to bed every night. (Mark's request of course..., and a way to ensure that Katie does not get her grubby little paws on his new train.)

Humm...I wonder if that qualifies me to list "Train Conductor" on my resume?????

Ants.....

The ants are marching one by one and marching right into my house. I have been dealing with a minor infestation of sugar ants for the past six weeks. They have contained themselves to my mud room and laundry room, having yet to discover the tasty treats that would await them on my kitchen floor, especially after any meal in which Mark and/or Katie have been partaking.

I have tried several methods to control the ants. First I used bug spray, the kind that is only supposed to be used outside....killed the ants, almost killed me. Second I got ant poison. The kind that they crawl into, remove and take back to the nest. Let me tell you these are SMART ants. The word on the street is out, stay away from the grey plastic thing, its no good. They are not the least bit interested in the ant poison. However should any small morsel of food finds its way into the mud room or laundry room, they are all OVER that.

On Saturday afternoon I noticed that the ants has become quite prolific. I scanned my floor, trying to determine what was attracting them, knowing that it was not ant bait, but I could not find any morsel of food that they might be going after. Lauren and Mark were becoming fascinated with the increasing number of ants, and Katie, well lets just say she is NOT a fan of ants. Mark wanted to step on all the ants, a game that clearly would have kept him occupied for hours, but would have made a mess for me. So I decided the best way to handle the current situation would be with my handy dandy Dyson vacuum, and its oh so powerful suction.....

I pulled the vacuum out of the closet....to discover it was covered in ants.... The cause of their attraction to the vacuum??? Cheetos. Earlier in the day Katie felt the need to do a grab, run and dump. What does that mean in English? She grabbed the half full bag of Cheetos, ran into the office and dumped the Cheetos on the office floor. The majority of the Cheeots were picked up by hand, but to remove the lovely layer of orange dust on my carpet, (the natural byproduct of a good Cheeto,) I had gotten my vacuum out, which resulted in the brush on my vacuum being tainted with the color, flavor and odor of Cheeto. A natural attraction for ants.

So I sucked up what ants I could, thinking I had got the majority of them and emptied the vacuum contents outside, but apparently my attempt at ant eradication was in vain, because a short time later ants littered the floor of my laundry room, on their way to the vacuum and a delicious meal of Cheetos. Might have to get out that outdoor ant spray......

On a side note, the two year old is deathly afraid of ants. Believing the laundry room was ant free she entered only to see ants on the floor, which resulted in screams of bloody murder and her body becoming frozen in place, and shaking....its going to be a LONG summer with the bugs that infest my yard......

Spring

Valenties day was over, it was time for spring decor! Because of moving my wreath, I had the same issue with spring decor that I had with Valentine's Day decor, the absence of something above my mantle.

So I took a similar course of action to solve the problem. I purchased a wooden frame, painted it black, purchased a white mat, and filled it in with scrapbook paper. I saw this idea for a tree on a Papercraft magazine I subscribe to. Their tree was on a card, which seemed like entirely too much work for a card, but not too much work for a home decor project.

I took a tree branch from a tree just outside my front door, hot glued it onto the paper, and then began decorating with leaves. The leaves I cut out of scrapbook paper with my Cricut machine. I hot glued the leaves to the branch, which resulted in the leaves sticking out in all directions creating a really cool 3D effect.

To finish it off I cut the word "Spring" out of pink paper on on Cricut machine and "blinged" it with pink glitter.

Finished product.

Spring decor.

This is why it is good to have friends!

Last week I was in a bit of a dilemma...Linda, my mother in law, who is my totally awesome babysitter, and whom my kids, especially Katie, like more than me, was up in Idaho because her mother passed away. Rick took Lauren to Idaho to join the rest of the family for the funeral, which just happened to be on a Tuesday, which is the same day of the week I work, and is the day of my Board meetings. Now normally I can just participate in my Board by telephone if for some reason I can't physically be in my office, but with the volume of cases lately, telephone participation is difficult at best. I really needed to be in my office.

Which brought me to the dilemma of what in the world do I do with Mark and Katie??? Well thank heavens for good friends, whom despite knowing my children, still agreed to watch them.

My friend Sue took the first shift from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at her house, and then brought them back to my house at 10:30 a.m. for my friend Sherry to watch them until 12:30 p.m.

Sue knowing, my children, especially Mark, was armed with her camera, because of course this would be a fine opportunity for good blogging material, and Mark being the obedient child that he is, (LOL) did not disappoint. For more on Sue's adventures with Mark, click on her blog....and be warned should Mark come to your house for a morning of play, you might need your dictionary to understand his vocabulary.....

http://bobandsuesnews.blogspot.com/2010/02/friends-that-came-to-play.html

That was painful.....

When I was growing up I recall my mother being a frequent victim of a urinary track infection. It seemed to me like she would have one to two a year. I just assumed that is what I had to look forward to as an adult. (I recall being told by my mother and grandmother it all relates to being a women, and what having children does to your body....)

Anywho, I have managed to avoid that fate, and assumed it must be because I am not capable of pushing children out of that region of my body, hence it is still in pristine condition. ( I know, I know too much information....)

Well having gotten cocky in my old age, and probably because I have WAAAYYY too much stress in my life, my body decided it was time that I should be able to say to my mother one day, "I feel your pain." Yes it was a UTI. It started out on Sunday night, well it probably started long before that...I just felt it for the first time on Sunday night. It was uncomfortable, and I knew it would be a long night, but I figured I could tough it out until morning and then call my doctor's office. Well it went from annoying, to bad, to worse, to awful, in the span of about four hours. Now mind you I have a pain threshold that is terribly high, so for me to cry "uncle" at 2:00 a.m. was a big deal. By 2:00 a.m. I could not take the pain anymore. I called Jeff and Linda in tears and asked to be taken to the emergency room, I was NOT going to make it to 7:00 a.m. when my doctor's office opened.

Off to the ER, to pee in a cup. I will spare you the details, I will just say, it did not resemble pee....and yep 15 minutes later, diagnosis, UTI. Duh! But with that diagnosis came DRUGS. One for the infection, and one for the pain. Took about 30 minutes to kick in, but relief at last, and sleep.

So now I have one more thing in common with my mother.

Naughty

We, that is Katie, has been naughty. Yesterday afternoon, instead of watching a movie with Lauren, which is what I thought she was doing, Katie decided that she needed to empty her dresser, as in take every stitch of clothing out of her dresser and place it on the floor. After she was finished with that activity she moved on to my bathroom and began the activity of getting into my makeup, in conjunction with making sure the carpet was thoroughly soaked with water.


Arrruuuuuuggggg......that child. She is testing every last ounce of patience I have.....

On a bright note, I needed to clean out her dresser and remove all the clothing that was too small, so I guess that activity will be moving up the priority list.

Lexmark C510

Thanks to Jeron I have a really NICE printer. Although it was formally used for less than legal activities in my home it has been reformed and prints off Relief Society lessons, legal decisions, homework, coupons, and the occasional fun new recipe. That is until lately....

Part of Mark's therapy for his hands is to learn to use the mouse on the computer. Yes, yes I know I, I probably have the only five year old in America who I have had to force to use the computer to play video games. But he has become quite adapt at the mouse and playing video games and it has done wonders for his hand eye coordination. In fact now he willingly now plays on the computer for 30-40 minutes a day. The only problem the printer.....

Some how in all Mark's education on the computer he figured out how to print, and print he does. There is something magical and powerful about pressing the "print" button and then hearing the printer warm up, with fun and colorful documents coming forth.

Now if Mark only wanted to print a document or two a day I could live with that, but Mark's problem is his personal motto is "go big or go home." Mark prints to an excess, and with each color cartridge on this very NICE, but very expensive printer, costing me a cool $125 a piece, I am not in favor of excessive printing. At first I tried telling him that he could not print that many documents. Didn't work, he thought it was a suggestion, not a commandment. Then I yelled at him. Didn't work either, I was ignored. Finally I disconnected the printer from the computer. For the moment that seems to be successful, that is until he figures out how to reconnect the printer.

The only downside of this trick is that although the printer is disconnected, it still does not stop documents from being sent to the printer. If I reconnect the printer without first going into the control panel and clearing out documents sent to the printer, reconnection results in a whole host of unexpected documents coming forth from the printer. Saturday night I needed to print off my Relief Society lesson, and as I went into to clear out the printer, Mark had hit a new high in the number of documents he attempted to print, a mere 241.

Now the question is, how long am I going to be able to get away with my disconnect trick????