Do Better

Pic taken May 2005
This makes me want to take a trip to Temple Square to photograph all the spring flowers. Are they out yet? And what time of day is the best for taking pictures?

General Conference was great, as it usually is when you come ready to listen. There were some really inspirational talks. I hope I stay motivated to reread them, and listen to them again, if the audio is available on the Church website, over the next few months. I felt ready to get up, and get busy doing better. Reaching out to serve others more, get my act together financially, and attend the temple more. Good stuff! After listening to all the stories and examples, I also felt like counting my blessings, which maybe I make a big blog post about tomorrow when I've got more time, as I realized there are many in bigger financial straits than we are, and who have suffered through so much more. At least Zen is employed, and I have some skills to bring in a little money. It could be a lot, lot worse. My kids are healthy, we are all healthy, no major illnesses like cancer. We have each other, we are sealed together, we know that Christ lives, that He and Heavenly Father love us, that we have repentance and the Great Plan of Happiness, and that all the ills of mortality can be reconciled, either in this life, or the next, through faith in Christ. Life is very good.

Time Log -

8:45 am - get up, shower & dress, puttered around, looked at my Accucut dies
10 am - listened to General Conference on the internet while I made breakfast
12 noon - we cleaned the ENTIRE upstairs, bathroom & bedrooms included. Why? Zen had invited one of his coworkers over for dinner. It was iffy whether or not his friend was going to come, but we wanted to be ready.
1:20 pm - in my craftroom, looking at a catalog
2 pm - listened to General Conference on the internet while I looked at things in my craftroom, then I went upstairs to start cooking chicken (bought 2 big packs at Smith's yesterday, and they needed to be cooked & frozen), also made cookies
6 pm - finished cooking, ate dinner with the family at our kitchen table (an extremely rare occurence), then took a nap
8:45 pm - woke up, helped kids, searched for things on the internet, gave Emma a bath & put her to bed, wrote my post

End Post #58, 2009

Ice Show 2009

It always makes me nervous when I try to make a joke, and no one laughs. So, you didn't like my "Tribal Name" post? Come on, it had to be at least a little funny, even though I didn't put a lot of effort into it late at night. Tough crowd!

Dani and I participated in this year's Ice Show at the Rec Center. The theme was "Up and Away", things that fly. There were airplanes, bumblebees, fairies, pilots, etc. My group, the Adults, did balloons, to the tune, "99 Luftballoons", and Dani's group, Betas, did eagles, to the tune, "Fly Like an Eagle."




The pinwheel formation, one of my favorites. We did several variations in the adult routine.

Time Log -
8am - woke up, thought about my day, exercised, got an eBay package ready to mail, ran to post office, showered & dressed
10am to 12noon - watched Conference. There were some great talks, as usual. I particularly noted the one about addiction to debt. My ears were burning. I also multi-tasked by folding laundry, & washing new loads.
12noon to 2 pm - played games with Connor. Check out grocerysmarts.com, the grocery-saving system Lora introduced us to in an email several weeks ago. Looking forward to using it often. Shopped at Smith's.
2pm to 4pm - watched Conference, cooked lots of chicken while I listened to a live stream on the internet
4pm to 6pm - made dinner, cleaned some shelves in the garage to make room for the stuff I bought at Smith's caselot sale. Got ready to go to the iceshow
6pm to 8pm - The Ice Show
8pm to 10pm - hung out with the fam, watched tv on my laptop
10pm to 10:30 pm - got Foofie in bed, messed around on my laptop
10:30 pm - work on blog post
11:20 pm - do some scrapbooking research on eBay
11:55 pm - go to bed

Tribal Name

I had this funny thought occur to me last night. What would be your tribal name? I could think of several for our family. Here are some:

Family Tribal Names
1. The Holy-Monkeys
2. The Heathens

Zen
1. Kills-With-Farts
2. Works-Like-a-Dog
3. Addicted-to-WOW (World of Warcraft, you newbie)

Becky
1. Cleans-Butts
2. Hoarder-of-Craft-Supplies
3. Chief-Cook-and-Bottle-Washer

Gil
1. Kills-With-Farts-II
2. Purveyor-of-Insults
3. Computer-is-Crack

Dani
1. Queen-of-Distractedness
2. Embarrassed-by-Parents
3. Chief-Slob

Connor
1. Lives-on-Strawberry-Milk
2. Loves-Red-Blankie
3. Has-No-Fear

Emma
1. Foofie-Loo-Hoo/Sassy-Loo-Hoo
2. Bunny
3. Nee-Nee
4. Deet-Deet
5. Baby-Alligator

I ran across this funny website, Rum And Monkey, it has all kinds of funny widgets/surveys you can add to your stuff. A lot of it's pretty irreverant, and some of it's downright raunchy, but I know you want to look anyway:

For instance, I put Becky Allred in this elf name generator, and out came: Flecktop Horsebeard.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

Help me think of some more funny ones for us, or offer up some for your family!

Time Log - Ice Show Rehearsal Day

I think I may split these blog posts into pieces (that's ONE way of meeting my 365 posts for the year, in fact, it's probably cheating.) I just feel like they're mostly for me, and they are probably boring. Plus, I want to split my posts thematically, anyway. But, still be on the lookout for pictures. Because I'm sure there will still be days when it makes more sense to blog pics and details of my day together.

Time Log -

8 am - rolled out of bed, helped kids, exercised, made french toast breakfast for everyone
12 pm or so - showered, dressed, dropped books off at library, picked up Gil, ran to Wal-Mart, back home, spent the afternoon organizing some things in my craftroom, got eBay package ready, fixed Mackay's binky clip, ran to the post office with two minutes to spare (whew!), back in the craftroom
5:50 pm - Mom, it was flashback-time as I drove Gil out to Green River, about 15 min away, so he could go to a play at the high school there. It made me appreciate all the times you chauffered me around in high school as I was involved with theater there. In fact, the memories of your service are what tipped the scales in motivating me to drive Gil out there when I really didn't want to. I was kind of griping the whole way, but I knew I would regret it if I didn't do it.

Then, I drove back to Rock Springs to go to the ice show dress rehearsal with Dani. I actually hired a sitter for the first time in years, I think. It was Becca Allred, one of the teenage daughters of the other Allreds in our ward. Then, when I got home, I watched tv on my laptop, and now I'm posting and going to bed.

Food Log - 2 french toast for breakfast, orange juice, a mini pizza at the ice rink, an apple cider at the ice rink, one bowl of mac n cheese at home after the ice rink, then two bowls of ice cream.

Way too much daydreaming all day

End Post #54, 2009

Runnin' Around

Okay, I'm getting fed up with the it-takes-me-an-hour-to-remember-what-I-did-today-minute-by-minute posts, so I'll just provide a paragraph summary, then see if I can move on to something more meaningful, or at least more interesting. Nobody needs to know I did my lifetime-2013th load of laundry. Whatever.

Mostly had a Soccer-Mom-Run-Everyone-Around type of day. Got up around 7:30-7:50, hung out with Foofie, snoozed on the couch, then by 9:30, I was up. I cleaned the house, 'cause it was trashed, did laundry, put Foofie down for a nap by 11:30 or so. Played cars with Connor, then I exercised. Naughty-Foo only napped about an hour, and by one, I was running out of time to get ready for Dani's doctor appt. I wanted to have cookies for the kids when they got home from school, so I quickly made a batch of oatmeal cookies, showered, and dressed. I picked Dani up from school, and of course, we were late. If Dani's the Queen of Distractedness, I'm the Queen of Lateness. Just constantly trying to fit too much into too little time. Anyway, Dani does indeed have an ear infection, so we tripped on over to Wal-Mart, picked up medicine and groceries and headed home. I ran Gil up to the College, where he has started taking voice and acting lessons. He's seriously into the whole drama thing, and is even thinking about taking on a part-time job to pay for it, since money is tight once again at our house. Then, I came back, goofed a little, then we all headed back out to Dani's Parent/Teacher Conference. She has much-improved since last quarter. She's very smart, but lacking in follow-through. Her teacher and I made a bigger effort to get her to remember to do her homework, and her grades really came up this quarter. She stayed to help out with the Book Fair. Then, when the little kids and I got back to the house, we had a nice surprise. Zen was home! He got to come back from the field for one night. Yeay! Later, he rounded up the older kids (whew!). I took a nap between 6:30 and 7:10. Then, I helped Dani with her iceshow costume. The show theme is Things That Fly, and her group are eagles. I'm just glad the costume is done. And my group is just wearing all black (Yes! less sewing to do this year!). Then, I just goofed off the rest of the night. And after getting Emma and Connor ready for bed, I pretty much hung up my hat.

Okay, that was not a very short paragraph. Oh, well. I'm just going to bed, and see what tomorrow brings.

Grace

It's 1 am, and I feel like writing another post, for some reason. Something I keep meaning to get to, but never do, so I'll do it now before it slips through the cracks.

For some reason, mostly just the passing of time and the experience it brings, I appreciate the perfection and grace of babies more than I ever have before. I find myself in spots throughout the day, just looking at Emma, and I'm in awe, like I can't store enough of her away in my memories, tiny fragile little bubbles, that come into being, only to float away and pop out of existence. I love how she moves, the sweetness of it, as if the world sings with every breath that she takes. I love the way she smells, the whole perfume of it, her laundry soap, baby powder, sour milk, her skin, everything that makes her unique. It's bittersweet because I know it won't last. We have to leave our infant perfection behind and determinedly march forward in order to reach for the more meaningful perfection of fire-hewn exaltation.

But I pause now, to breath in a few more tiny moments of grace:

Emma's top teeth popped all at once, the two on the side coming in even before the two in the front.
Emma's 9-month-old pics, 17 Mar 09



I love watching her feet, tiny, sweet, graceful and beautiful.

Is It That Time of the Month Already?

Yesterday was a hint of things to come, maybe. Because today was so completely useless that I'm not even bothering with the usual time log. The only thing that saves it from being a complete waste was the fact that I got up, exercised, and showered. I've had plenty of days where I didn't even do that. And hey, I went to my Scout Meeting tonight, also not a waste. But the rest sucked. I made sure the kids were fed, but that's about it. I totally blew off the day, goofin' off. The house wasn't clean to begin with, but now it's totally trashed. Emma was in bed by 8pm, but I finally told Gil to go to bed at 9:30pm, Dani had already fallen asleep on the couch with an earache, might be at the doctor's office tomorrow. Anyway, I was useless, and Gil came downstairs at 10:30pm, complaining that Connor was still awake (I'd told Gil earlier to leave him alone and let him finish his movie), the house was messy, and it all really bugged him, and would I please fix it? One of my nicknames for him is Anal Child, a term of affection if ever I've heard one.

Oh, and the Food Log, you can just forget that, because once I started eating after I exercised, I pretty much didn't stop. I just had to be shoving something in my mouth practically all day. I couldn't even remember half of what I ate, if I wanted to. Which got me thinking, either I'm pregnant (perish the thought), or it's that time of the month. I usually have a day or two of ravenous appetite preceding Mother Nature's visit. So, I guess we'll see what happens in the next few days. TMI?