Twas the night before Dad's Day and all through the house, not a gift was delivered, not one for my spouse
It is Father's Day in two days and I am officially the worst present giver in the world. In my defense, Bryce is the worst present receiver in the world (for various reasons that would take far too long to discuss in this post), but all the same, he will not have one present to open on Father's day. Here is my problem: I ponder and ponder for months in advance until I find the perfect gift for the person, I purchase it right away (usually still months in advance), then get excited--full to the brim with the thought of giving my perfect gift and what joys it will bring, then I spill over and somehow (whether intentionally or no) spill the beans to the person, then I have to repeat the process all over again so that they will have an actual gift on the date. Why don't I just write a card as a reminder of said gift? you ask... because a gift isn't a good gift if you already know all about it. So say I. However, for this Father's Day, I was going to be smart. I decided to wait until the last minute to get the gift so I wouldn't give it away. And now I sit, the day before Father's Day-eve and his gift is still in transit. Curse my gift giving tendencies! Good thing Bryce knows we love him anyway.
Lots of good things
Two things...
Item One: I went with my sister to help her with a class she teaches for Poppyseed Projects and fell in love. Seriously. Fantastic. I am not much of a scrapbooker--and by "not much" I mean, my attempts usually look more like a kindergarten art project gone awry. Sewing, cakes, wire, even wood, those I can get at least a salvageable product with enough time and effort, but no matter how much I try to scrapbook, it always turns out the same. Give me yarn and paint over paper any day. So, needless to say, I was a little wary of making one of these because when I heard about it/saw a project I thought it would be every scrapbookers dream (read: my nightmare) to make, but it wasn't. It was absolutely doable and now I understand what all the hub-bub is about because every single project turned out looking fantastic. There is nothing to make you feel more crafty than something that takes you 2 hours (or less) to put together and looks like it took days (or more). I didn't even make one for me and I felt slightly triumphant at the end of the class just seeing all of them. I'm going to go make one on June 25th and if anyone else wants to, my sister has plenty more room in the class. I'm so excited to have a picture of the temple up (to replace the dinky little one we have sticky tacked to the wall that barely even counts). Anyway... The point of this is to say I have missed being in the land of two-story craft stores and do-it-yourself everything and it is going to be a challenge to not bring home my body weight in sewing patterns, craft supplies, and crafty doings.
Item Two:
This was posted on one of the blogs I follow and I thought it was worthy of sharing. http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/05/mormons-rock.html
It just makes me happy to be Mormon, you know? Not that I wouldn't be pleased as punch to be a member of what Bryce's former boss refers to as "the club," even if it had the worst publicity in the world, but it warms my heart when I read articles like this and see good LDS people getting good recognition and helping others who are not of our faith get a real view of who we are. Hooray!
Slow and unsteady...is just glad to finish
We are finally in Utah. Hallelujah. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
After a road trip that was just short of apocalyptic, we made it with only minor bruising to show for it. We should've known this road trip was going to be an event of epic proportion when it started with a turtle semi-rescue wherein I made Bryce jump out of the car to rescue a turtle that had taken it into his head to cross the road in the middle of a busy intersection near our house. After that turtles were everywhere. Seriously. One was even crossing the freeway in the middle of Nebraska with no water in sight. So strange.
The car looked like a war zone from day one, courtesy of Little man, but we were prepared for that disaster so it didn't faze us much.
However, when our car started making some not-so-comforting noises just outside of St. Louis, the worries began. Thankfully I have a daddy who can diagnose the problem when I say, "It's going duh-duh-clickety-clunk" and warn us that it is the brake. And even more thankfully I have a husband who listens to when the Spirit tells him we had better stop for the night and have it looked at. The Midas man (who is my new favorite human) said it was a miracle our car stayed intact as he discovered that when we had the brakes replaced the day before our trip it somehow slipped their minds that they might need to tighten the lug nuts. I'm still saying constant prayers that Heavenly Father looked out for us that night and kept us all safe, not to mention the fact that the Midas man will get a lifetime supply of cookies from me because he is my hero. Really, if you ever find yourself needing car help around Fairview Heights, IL, go see Denny Sleeper at Midas. The end.
The car looked like a war zone from day one, courtesy of Little man, but we were prepared for that disaster so it didn't faze us much.However, when our car started making some not-so-comforting noises just outside of St. Louis, the worries began. Thankfully I have a daddy who can diagnose the problem when I say, "It's going duh-duh-clickety-clunk" and warn us that it is the brake. And even more thankfully I have a husband who listens to when the Spirit tells him we had better stop for the night and have it looked at. The Midas man (who is my new favorite human) said it was a miracle our car stayed intact as he discovered that when we had the brakes replaced the day before our trip it somehow slipped their minds that they might need to tighten the lug nuts. I'm still saying constant prayers that Heavenly Father looked out for us that night and kept us all safe, not to mention the fact that the Midas man will get a lifetime supply of cookies from me because he is my hero. Really, if you ever find yourself needing car help around Fairview Heights, IL, go see Denny Sleeper at Midas. The end.
But really that was only the beginning. After that we had the great floods of Iowa/Nebraska. We turned in to get some food and found all the restaurants closed and people frantically sandbagging. It turns out they had opened a spillway in the Missouri river and the whole place was about to be underwater. We were told that the highway was still safe, but when we got about a mile down the road and found the lane next to us entirely covered in water, we decided to take a different route, adding an hour to our trip, but ensuring we got there. Didn't get any terribly good pictures, but you get the idea. Even with our alternative route we watched the flood waters threaten the freeway through half of the state.As if that wasn't enough, we finally found a Subway (to provide Little with some fresh veggies since that is about the only thing he'll eat at the moment, which makes road tripping rather interesting) and as soon as he finished his meal, it promptly… came back up. After many tears, towels, and outfits, he felt a bit better, but we decided since we were going to be up all night anyway, we'd push on through the night and make sure that he had a bed waiting for him at the end of his blechs.
After that we had exploding drinks, more turtles, a brief stop in Kingdom city, a herd of wild horses, and last but not least, arriving to find Utah frozen over (not implying that Utah has any similarity to the bad place). In the end we were looking around every turn for locusts.
But all is well now and we are in Utah safe and sound. The first thing we did was start to unpack and the first thing Little Britches did was prevent us from doing so, mostly by attempting to play the laundry game which we invented to be a distraction for him so I could get things done at home, but this time it was in my suitcase so it was less than helpful.
I think he enjoyed the unpacking though because he has picked up a new habit since we've been here. He runs around "putting stuff away." I use that phrase loosely as his version is more like hiding things in random drawers where I will never find them or closing doors/cupboards while I or he is still in them. All the same... I will definitely encourage the impulse.
All-in-all, we saw some fun things on the way, but we are glad the road trip is over.
But all is well now and we are in Utah safe and sound. The first thing we did was start to unpack and the first thing Little Britches did was prevent us from doing so, mostly by attempting to play the laundry game which we invented to be a distraction for him so I could get things done at home, but this time it was in my suitcase so it was less than helpful. I think he enjoyed the unpacking though because he has picked up a new habit since we've been here. He runs around "putting stuff away." I use that phrase loosely as his version is more like hiding things in random drawers where I will never find them or closing doors/cupboards while I or he is still in them. All the same... I will definitely encourage the impulse.
All-in-all, we saw some fun things on the way, but we are glad the road trip is over.
"If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." - Lewis Carroll
I had an epiphany the other day; and this time it wasn't one of those I've-lost-my-mind-isn't-it-laughable ones, it was a real, legitimate epiphany for me. It started because I had a moment of divine intervention about something that has been on my mind a lot lately and in reporting it to Bryce later realized that the reason I pegged it as revelation was because it was a logical/reasonable thought process. It made perfect sense in my head, so it must be revelation from heaven. Now, this may simply mean that I have crossed the line from quirky to completely insane, but I'd like to think that it just means I have some mental work to do.
Bryce is always the logical one, this is no mystery to anyone, but because of this I've let what small amount of logic I have slip out the window. With every time I've spent three hours trying to figure something out in the only way I can think to do it and Bryce has come home and showed me a much faster/easier way to do the same thing in 5 seconds or less, I find myself doing those things less and less. I don't tax my brain anymore or even bother to try to figure it out because I know if I wait for Bryce to come home, he will do it better. There are 2 major problems I see with this, a: Sometimes Bryce isn't around much/doesn't have the time and b: I am quickly losing the ability to use the logical part of my brain. Not to mention the fact that it is placing a large handicap on my confidence level. It sounds silly, but I am absolutely serious and slightly dreading the fact that I am going to have to put my logical mind to use despite how much it grunts and groans about it after so long of sitting generally dormant.
In other more exciting news, we've almost survived finals. There have been quite a few sleep-related incidents, and being woken up in the middle of the night to Bryce spouting law reviews or Latin terminologies explaining that he's just finishing the conversation we were having (a conversation that never existed as it is 3 AM and I was sound asleep), but other than that we are unscathed. We also found out the other day that we are going to spend part of the summer in Utah. And though packing our stuff and getting us all ready to leave in 2 weeks is not my idea of fun, it will be a good experience.
Our life... the Easter egg hunt
A toy in the closet, cracker in the couch, a flip flop in the bottom of the stroller, and recently we've added actual Easter eggs to the list making it a bit more excusable, but still... We've officially decided that our life is one all-encompassing Easter egg hunt. Things are hiding everywhere. In one way it's an adventure a because life is full of little discoveries, on the other hand, half the time you can't find anything because Little has taken it to one of his hiding places and you end up tearing apart the house in an effort to find it again. The latter view tends to take over my mentality. Good thing he is so cute.
Also, though it has nothing to do with anything, please to note my bunny bum cupcakes that I made for our Easter picnic. It's almost embarrassing how proud I am of them.
Piracy is alive and well
So Little has a fisher price pirate ship set that has pretty much been his sole entertainment since my sister gave it to him a month or so ago. He particularly dotes on the cannonball. He carries it around everywhere he goes which means that at any given moment you could find yourself sitting on, kicking, dislodging, or being otherwise accosted by a cannonball in our house.This morning it was on the kitchen table for some reason and as Bryce moved to do something it somehow flew off and hit him in the gut. He caught it and immediately yelled out, "We're under SIEGE!!!" looking around frantically. Few times in my life have I laughed that hard.
Also... I was remiss in blogging his actual birthday so I thought I'd add some more piracy to this post. Of course it was a pirate birthday. I'm not sure that you can read it in the picture, but we made him a shirt that says, "Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of milk" and my sister's kids outfitted him with a pirate hat so that he could be truly piratical for the day. I made a treasure island cake and we played find the treasure on the map and tattooed ourselves silly. Much to our surprise, Little ate the cake pretty daintily and barely got a touch on himself, which was terribly unpiratical, but we'll work on that later.
Dinosaurs and disillusionment
Not that I ever had any grand illusions about this, but I can't spell. This is a recent rather disheartening discovery. If we're being honest, I can't say it's entirely recent as I've been attempting to find comfort in blaming my deteriorating mental state on motherhood for quite some time now--and yes, there has been a serious decline in brain functionality since Little's been around; however, apparently my problems are much deeper. I hit a new low when, while walking in the baby clothing section, I had an epiphany (as much as I wish it weren't the case, the amount of awe and shock I felt can only be classified that way). There is a word, not a very common word, but one everyone knows (read: should have known how to spell from the third grade). A word seldom seen in print, but simple enough to be placed on a baby's t-shirt. A word that has caused me to question my existence as a college graduate. A word that I am way too embarrassed to actually mention. I took one look at that little baby shirt with aforementioned word printed on it and realized that my entire life I've been spelling it wrong, and not just wrong, egregiously so. It starts with a completely different letter for heavens sake! Now, I recognize that this post is ridiculously over-dramatic, but there really is no doing justice to the trauma I felt when faced with the staggering reality of my mental state. Ok. Dramatics done. Simply put: I would lose horribly if I ever played "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" and I find myself wondering how on earth I expect to write a book (or even a coherent sentence) in my current state.
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