Wednesday, April 30, 2008

More rambling stories about kids

My life pretty much revolves around my kids. (And tv, but we won't go there.) So you shouldn't be very surprised that this post is a story about two of them. It's not a very long story, but it made me laugh. And I'm sure I can come up with other things to stretch out this post.

As I was in the car today with Molly and Lyssa, Molly started basically head-banging to the music on the radio. She had a huge grin and said to Lys, "Dude, this is awesome!" To which Lys immediately said, "I'm not a dude, I'm a girl!" then proceeded to join her in the head-banging. Now I have had the occasional outburst at another driver when they decide that a speed of about 20 below the speed limit is a good speed of, "Dude! Go!" but I don't actually recall using the words "dude" and "awesome" in the same sentence around my kids. She must have gotten it from her brother. Made me laugh at any rate. Especially when about a minute later Lys said to Molly, "Dude, do this!" And Molly responded the same as Lys had, "I'm not a dude, I'm a girl!"

Emma had her kindergarten field trip to the zoo today. Luckily it didn't rain, but it was a much cooler day than yesterday. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing when spending the day out in the sun. She had a blast. I pictured her not being happy about the lack of seatbelts on the bus, but she grinned and said that she didn't even get hurt riding in a bus without a seatbelt. I gather from her constant goings on about the zoo that she had a good time. They said to pick the kids up at 2 and since both afternoon and morning kindergarten classes went to the field trip, I pictured chaos in picking up the kids so went over about 20 minutes early. Which is actually a little bit earlier than I planned, but Lys was very cranky because she was insisting that we left her drink at the restaurant we went to and that I should go back and get it. So it was easier just to drive over a few minutes before I planned. Anyway, the buses had just gotten to the school when I got there and kids were lining up to go into the school and Emma saw me and came running. So I didn't have to sit there for 20 minutes to wait for her. Which was nice. Except that Lys wasn't happy that I drove back home after that.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Contests

You may recall my earlier post about winning contests and how I won a Shrek mug. Well, the radio station I listen to the most has had a contest where people would email in their guesses as to when they think they would play their one millionth song (R.E.M.'s It's The End of the World as we Know it). They gave a certain time frame to make the guesses in. I picked a random date and time figuring I would be way off.

Apparently I was wrong about being way off. I got an email today from the radio station informing me that I was one of the 101 closest guesses and that I should go to Legacy Mazda on Friday, May 2nd for their celebration when they announce the name of the person who had the closest guess. The email said that the person must be there in order to win the Miata. I think I should at least try to be there. How often do you have odds like that to win a car? Probably won't win, but could be fun anyway.

Russ grinned when I told him about the email and asked me what color I would pick for his car. Says I wouldn't be able to drive it with the kids, so it would be winning a car for him. He has a point there, but it would still be my car. After all, he has a car.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Doctor appointment ramblings

I know it hasn't been the case for every single doctor appointment I've had with pregnancies, but with a good number of them, it has been stormy on the day of my appoinment. It didn't click for me over the week as I would watch the weather reports and see that it was supposed to be stormy today that it would be stormy (yet again) for my doctor appointment I had. It was when I looked out this morning and saw that the ground was wet that I thought of it. Especially when it started to snow. And then I laughed.

Last month it snowed in the morning before my appointment. The month before that, well, I don't exactly remember. I do remember snow being on the ground and looking at the clouds through the windows in the waiting room. But I do remember commenting about how it seemed to always be stormy for my appointments starting with Jimmy. Then it continued with the others. It stormed the night before Emma was born, even. But I guess that is one nice thing about having a baby in the summer. Gets so I don't have to wonder if I'm going to be all-powerful again and it will snow the day of my apppointment.

One thing I do like about my doctor is I usually don't have to wait long. When I got there today, his receptionist told me he was out delivering a baby but should be back in a few minutes. I actually think this was my fastest appointment this time around. I really didn't wait long at all. Just not really looking forward to my next appointment. My next appointment is the one that I "get" to do the glucose test and get the rhogam shot.

Going to be a long few months that I have left though. I told Molly I had my doctor appointment and she asked, "To get the baby out?" Maybe I'll break down and do what Mom suggested and make a calendar for them so they stop asking when the baby is going to come out. Although I should start practicing saying "Leave the baby alone" now. Stopped and ate lunch at Crown Burger after the appointment. Some people in the booth next to us had a baby. Emma wouldn't eat her food because she was too interested in the baby. Got home and said she was hungry.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

A Wet Mess

Sometimes I really should listen to my little thoughts that tell me I really should go see what Molly and Lys are doing. Take yesterday morning, for example. I get online in the mornings for a bit and they are usually down with me watching tv for a moment and staying right next to me for a minute, etc. Not so yesterday. They decided to play upstairs while I was online. I kept thinking that I should check and see what they are doing. When I finally did, I regretted not checking earlier.

The first thing I saw when I came upstairs was not something they did, however. This one was the dog, who had decided that knocking over the garbage can and spreading most of it through the kitchen was a good idea. Really don't know why. There wasn't anything in the garbage that she would have wanted and her food bowl was full. So I stopped and cleaned that up. Then I stepped into the hall.

I could hear Molly and Lys talking happily and saw that half of the water was out of Jimmy's fish tank and the dragon figure that went in it was sitting on the dresser next to it. On the floor (besides a little bit of the water from the tank) were some cough drop wrappers and the cough drops that had been in the wrappers. Along with a couple of other things they pulled out of the hall closet. I immediately said, "Girls! We do not do this!" and sat and thought I spend way too much time online (of course, you notice I'm back online...but this time Lys is on my lap).

Lys stepped out of her bedroom and said, "We just wanted to hold the fish." In her hands was a cough drop wrapper that she was using to hold one of the guppies from Jimmy's tank. I had her quickly put it back in the tank and noticed that they had also dumped out all of the fish food. Where, I still haven't quite figured out. Some of it went into the tank. Haven't found what happened to the rest yet.

While I was explaining to Lys that the fish will die if we take them out of the tank, Molly came over and said she was sorry too and would catch the baby one and put it back. That was when I discovered what happened to the missing water from the tank.

I saw that Molly and Lys had taken the lid to one of the big rubber containers I have for the kids for their toys and had it on the floor in the bathroom. Using a different toy, they had taken some of the water from the tank, along with some of the rocks and filled up the lid. Swimming happily (well, it might have been more of a panicked swim) in the water on the lid was the baby guppy. I took the toy they used to get the water and carefully scooped up the baby fish with some water and put it back in the tank. I dumped the lid full of water into the toilet. Really could have been worse. Some of the water spilled off the lid as I moved it, but for the most part, they kept things generally dry.

The fish tank water is quite murky today. Wonder what they put in it that I didn't notice.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

My birthday

Yesterday was my birthday, as you are probably aware. The celebration for it started the day before when Russ and I decided to take the kids to a pizza buffet after picking up his car from the mechanic (I hate cars by the way. Especially ones that end up costing us a lot of money by needing to go in 3 times in about as many weeks). Jimmy complained a little about going to the pizza place because he really wanted us to have spaghetti for dinner. The complaints didn't last all that long though. Except that the one we went to wasn't as fun as the one we had gone to when we were in St. George. I do think Jimmy was very happy that he beat me at a game of air hockey.

Yesterday morning Stacey tried to call me at 8:45 (which was the time I was born) to wish me a happy birthday and gloat that for the next 5 minutes I was older than her, but I was gone taking the kids to school. I called her back when I got home and she tried to play the Cracker song, "Happy Birthday to me" but I couldn't hear it well so she emailed it to me. That is one song that Stacey and I tend to sing to each other every year on our birthday. Just because of the chorus. "Happy, happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. And to you." Yes, we are weird, but we find it fun to sing on our birthday. Especially being twins.

Russ had been planning on taking a lot of laundry over to the laundromat after we ate to dry them because our dryer has decided to stop working again. Only by the time he got over there, it had closed. Which actually turned out to be fine, because we still needed to return my dad's convertible we had borrowed for Russ to drive while his car was in the shop. We decided that after Jimmy got out of school, I would drive down with the laundry and dry the clothes at my parent's house and he would meet me there after work and bring back the convertible then. Sue had offered (very nicely, by the way) to tend the kids for us so we could go out last night for my birthday so we needed to be down that way anyway. Actually, she offered to have Madison tend the kids for us. Which Madison was very happy to do and seemed very proud of herself for her tending. I think it helped that when we got to her house and she came out to help get the kids in, Lys actually went to her from me and let her take her in the house.

After dropping the kids off, Russ and I went to Robintino's for dinner. I wasn't sure if I wanted somewhere like that or China Star or whatnot, but decided on Robintino's because Jo had called me earlier in the day to see if I wanted to meet them for lunch there and I wasn't able to. Got the taste of their little breadsticks that they give you as you look at your menu stuck in my mouth. On a Friday night, I was surprised we got in and out of there so fast. We got out fast enough that we had time to run over to the movie theater and make it just after the previews to see the movie Leatherheads. I liked the movie and would recommend it to others. It made me laugh.

Today Russ went to the store after the morning session of General Conference and bought some clothes for me for my birthday. The three oldest kids were playing with friends and Lys was sick (sorry Sue), so he didn't take any of them with him like he had planned. Lyssa's being sick also changed his plans for going to the Priesthood session with his dad and brothers. Russ doesn't know how to get to his parent's new place (I've been the one who has driven there) and decided he really should call a guy he home teaches who has recently started going back to church and invite him. So he ended up going with this guy. Actually, he offered to pick Russ up and take him to it when Russ called. Russ said he may go to Pace's after and get some ice cream, so I decided I shouldn't wait for him to eat some of my birthday cake with the kids. Yes, I ordered myself a birthday cake. Was really quite tempted to have them write on it, "Happy birthday to me," but changed my mind as I was ordering it. Russ had offered to make a cake for me, so I thought I should just have the usual birthday greeting on the cake. Almost wish I had done it though.

Man, I didn't realize when I started this post that it would be such a long, rambling post about my birthday. Should have known better. While I'm not the level of rambler that De is, I sure do try to get there it seems.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Saturday activity

This past Saturday we got together with Russ' family since Will was in town and attempted a family group photo. After which we had a little lunch and a belated Easter egg hunt for the kids. It was really cold out, so I was glad we had it at Dave and Michelle's house and didn't have to spend the whole time outside. Yes, I am a wimp. Of course, it probably wouldn't have felt so bad had I actually worn a coat. But come on, who actually thinks to wear a coat when it was only snowing a little? As you can probably tell in the following pictures, certainly not my kids. Well, Lys had a coat because she had a short sleeved shirt.

These first few pictures are in order of the opening of the back door to let the kids out to find the eggs. Well, as best of order as I could get with my camera. Tends to hesitate a bit to actually take the picture. I was kind of surprised the kids didn't come out all in a bunch and actually came out in a line.
Yes, Jimmy was the first one out.
If you look close on the left side of the picture, you can see that Sadie was next, followed by Emma and then Maddie.
Who was then followed by Molly.
Ethan and Josh were next. I'm sure Rebecca was in there somewhere. Probably got out earlier.
Russ helped Lyssa out.
Russ, Linda, Josh and Lys looking for eggs. Okay, Russ and Linda watching them look.
Jimmy about to grab an egg.
Emma rushing to find more.
Molly getting an egg.
This last picture was actually taken before the hunt began. Lyssa had been pushing Molly in the swing but Russ didn't get there in time with the camera.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

April birthdays


Happy birthday this month to Stacey, Evelyn, Lizzie, oh, and me. Hope it's a good one for everyone!