Skort it!

My girls love to wear dresses. My girls love to run and play and climb and dance. To keep them modest while they do all of the above, I invented these skorts. They have shorts sewn in underneath and they turned out pretty cute. So, without further ado, here are my adorable girls in their adorable daywear. :D





Thanks to my Bro for the awesome pictures!!

High School Me

If you had told the high school me everything I am doing now, I'm pretty sure my jaw would have suffered a rug burn! I look into the face I had then and it's different enough from my now face that I mostly see what it lacks. It lacks the understanding of true sacrifice and suffering; experience and true empathy; the inexplicable joy that comes from enduring inexplicable pain. The then me didn't know how good she had it! Mom to fix meals. Dad to earn money. Sisters and brother down the hall or down the stairs. Family Home Evening with Mom, Dad and siblings... oh! what I wouldn't give to have that again!! Sadie. Oscar. Grover. Homework that seems so much easier than the questions I now get asked by a curious 6 year old. :D Even having a lunch all to myself would now be a welcome change, rather than popularity suicide.

The then me worried so much about not having a lot of friends. If I could, I'd tell her not to sweat it. Lasting friendships don't always happen when we think they should, but they are worth the wait. High School me wouldn't have liked to hear that very much, I don't think. There was a lot of drama and friends that slowly became acquaintances, however, as with all things in life that do not kill us, it made me stronger.

Cheers to High School Me! We made it through and lived to tell the tale! ;)

Haphazard Notions

We turned the sprinklers up to 45 minutes instead of 30 to give our plants a fighting chance in the hot, hot sun. We only water twice a week to save on water and help our plants be tough!

Gracie's hair cut fits her already even though we cut off like 8 inches. She started the process and the hair stylist helped us out in the end, but it is really, really cute and I didn't think I'd like it. She reminds me of my Mom. :) I don't know how we knew looking at a purple, wrinkled newborn, but she is so aptly named! It's like we were psychic. :D

I have had a REALLY hard time with Landon turning one. It's like he's not going to be a baby anymore soon and I'm struggling with that.

It is so hard to watch people you love go through tough times and not be able to do anything about it.

Harry Potter rules!

I love to write, but I don't feel like I have the time to devote to it what it needs to become great. I really think it's in me, but I don't feel like I can do it justice right now. Which really bites!!

Hubby rides his bike to work every day and I am SO proud of him!! I wish I did anything that ambitious!

I'm a wimp about going anywhere with all of my kids by myself. I should just do it, but I usually talk myself out of it. I can do it, don't underestimate me, I just don't. Maybe I should.

I did my Visiting Teaching last month! Yay me!

Seriously, have you re-read Harry Potter lately? It rocks!

I'm behind on so many things! Is it due to the previous random gem? Maybe. But really, I just like to make things last longer, it's more fun that way. 8) (That one means my eyes are rolling, somebody was so clever!)

My kids watch too much TV. I try to make them play outside and they come in exhausted and pink because it's so hot. Maybe I'll make them run laps around downstairs. :D Heehee, that made me laugh!

If I spent half as much time doing the things I think about doing, I'd get so much done!

Contest Winner!!

Oh, Man! It's Saturday and I didn't announce the joke winner! Snap! I have had a very "Bad Mommy" week. I missed kids' programs and picked them up late from school... the last week of school really threw me for a loopety loopety loop!

I laughed heartily at all of the jokes! It was very hard to choose, as "funny" is such an objective quality that you all possess in droves! In the end, I know I'll do stuff like this again and I love you all and I know that you love me!

Okay.... Drumroll, please!! Our very distinguished panel of judges, consisting mostly of this most magnanimous blog owner :D laughed the very hardest at the Crider Clan joke about the ice cream and scrambled eggs with honorable mention going to my Mom because she made the winning joke even funnier! :D I love you, Mom! And I tell you every day so you'll never forget! ;)

Thanks everyone for playing!! Oh, by the way, the winner receives a matching pair of pillowcases with their names embroidered on them. Congratulations, Melissa!!

Thursday's the Day!

Thanks to everyone who has submitted jokes! I hope you are laughing as much as I have been! I expect to announce a winner tomorrow, so play 'em if ya got 'em! ;)

I'm so Proud of my Hubby!

When we first got married, our bodies settled as much as our minds did. My weight has fluctuated with babies, but it goes right back to the same weight not too long after. I can't help it, I don't do anything different, it's just the genes I have in me, I guess. Geoff, however, has struggled with it and has to fight a lot harder than I do. I have changed my cooking to involve a lot more applesauce instead of oil and 98% fat free soups and things like that and that leveled him off, but then we hit one of those ever-present plateaus. And so now today he has added more movement into his life by riding his bike to work. I could not be more proud! If T-shirts had buttons, mine would be bursting! It is not the easy thing to do. The easy thing to do is to continue cajoling Mr. 1993 to start every morning and drive up over the overpass to work. I mean, it takes SO much less gas than it did when Mr. 1993 was put-putting from Tooele to here. But imagine taking NO GAS! Imagine! I think there are FAR more people that could walk or ride bikes to work that don't because it is not the easy thing to do. And we all know to effect change, we cannot just do the easy thing. We have to bend, we have to stretch, we have to do it even if it's hard.

Our weight loss heroes are Josh and Ingrid. They get up early (sometimes not even sleeping after a night shift) or get away in the middle of the day and they work out at some point every day. Talk about the opposite of easy! But they look good! They feel good! They ROCK! Just because my body doesn't hold onto weight like some others' do, doesn't mean I don't appreciate the value of hard work and I think it's especially hard when it's to lose weight. You can't turn your back on it for a moment, or it comes sneaking back in. As one who has lost more than one person so dear to me due to weight issues, I am SO PROUD of these people and what they're doing to lengthen their lives and improve their confidence and to be healthy! I may be the world's tallest cheerleader, but I'm here... waving my pom poms... You can do it, Geoff!! Way to go, Josh!! You go, Girl, Ingrid!!

I Hereby Declare a Joke Contest!

Rules:

All jokes must be clean. All words contained in the joke must be words you would say in front of your mother. ;)

Bonus points for original jokes. As in, jokes I've never heard before, which isn't hard to do! :D Even if I've heard it before, I often can't remember!

Leave your joke as a comment and scatter laughter wher'ere we go!

Whomever makes me laugh the hardest wins a glorious prize... this is me, people. It will involve sewing and you will like it, I nearly promise! :)

I'll start by recounting one of my Dad's jokes... Sorry, Dad, if you want to participate, you'll have to come up with a new one. ;)

Once there was a scientist. He took a frog and placed it behind a line on a table and yelled "Jump!"
The frog jumped 5 feet! The scientist was impressed and recorded the data in his journal.

Next, he cut off one of the frog's back legs, placed it behind the line and again yelled "Jump!"
The frog jumped only 2 and a half feet this time and off to one side.
The scientist recorded the data.

Then, he cut off the frog's second back leg, placed it behind the line and once again yelled, "Jump!"
The frog didn't move, so he raised his voice and yelled louder, "JUMP!"
The frog still didn't move.

The scientists' conclusion: When you cut off a frog's legs, he can't hear.

House Warming

Our house was so warm today, we actually did something we've never been able to do before... we turned on the central air! You know those first few days when Spring is thinking about turning into Summer and it's sunny, but cool. The first time your chapstick melts in the car because the windows did that "greenhouse effect" thing and trapped a bunch of heat in there even though the breeze is still cool outside.

Emily said to me, "Mom, isn't the air coming out of the vents supposed to be warm? In our other house, it was always warm." :D It was a very different experience, but I kind of liked it. I'll probably do it again. ;)



I am just so loving this whole yard business! I cannot get enough of just walking around and looking at (and talking to) the things planted in my yard. I am so stinkin' proud of my raspberries, I cannot even tell you! Watch, now a frost will take them all. It is just so amazing to me that you plant this little dry seed, or in the raspberry's case, a dry-looking stick, and with enough care and water and sun, a whole plant will come out of it. Do you remember the movie Ferngully? Yeah, it's like that. "Help it grow," that's what I do. Now if we could just fix our sprinkler timer so I had a little help in the growing business. The sunlight is so covered! It really is warmer down south. I think I made it to at least June last year before I begged for cooler air... no, wait, I was WAY preggo with Landon, I'm sure I begged for it MUCH sooner!



I refuse to believe he is going to have his first birthday in only a couple of months. Today he taught himself to climb. He just started cruising along furniture, but if I leave him downstairs with the girls while I throw a load of dishes in or something, he would occasionally cruise the bottom step back and forth trying to figure out how to get up. Today we ate lunch on our new little IKEA picnic table outside on the grass and after everyone was done and I was on the deck hanging out more laundry, he figured out how to climb up and sit on the bench. I asked Emily if she had done it, but I could tell by the way one of his legs hadn't made it all the way up on, that he had done it himself. :D After that, he got up onto the bottom stair downstairs. I am so in for it!! :D In an absolutely good way. ;)

I love Springtime!

A few of Geoff's work pals came over tonight to see our new house. I'm actually getting to know some of them pretty well. They are so nice! Geoff loves his job and a big part of that is the people he gets to work with. We talked babies a lot tonight as one was expecting and one is expecting to be expecting soon. :D They're both newlyweds and I just so totally remember being there. I don't know where the time goes. That's why I don't want Landon to grow up so fast and I want to watch my plants grow slowly and relish it.

Life goes so quickly!