Show me the silver lining...

Today I spilled a huge industrial sized jar of salsa. The lid wasn't screwed on tight, I shook it...you can fill in the rest of the details.
So, as my lunch cooled, and I spent the next hour cleaning the one thing I didn't need to clean today, I decided to look for the positive. Here's my list.

• The floor is now cleaned in a five mile radius of the spill site. (okay, so the five mile thing is an exaggeration, but you would not believe how far salsa can travel when it is shaken)
• If the floor were carpet, I would have a huge salsa stain...I love my wood floor. (I can even identify all the little scratches and dents now, I got an extra close look today.)
• My refrigerator is now clean, inside and out...it was open when the accident occurred (in case you wondered, the fridge was also not on the "to clean today" list).
• While I was on the floor, I decided to clean the bottom of the cabinets...wow, those things get gross.
• I wasn't hungry for chips and salsa when I finished...go weight loss?
• Why burn candles? My house now smells like Pace Picante Sauce...wahoo!
• The kids were asleep when this went down...at first, it looks like a total bummer that I had to spend precious nap time cleaning up the famous spill of July 2008 (we have a big one every month or so). But when you think of having four little feet spreading salsa to places that it didn't reach on it own, it's a silver lining. Plus, the nerves (that were already shot) couldn't take "Mom, is that salsa?" "Mom, what happened?" "Mom, can I help you?" "Mom, what does 'S*@#!' mean?"

Serenity Now?

Disclaimer…I wrote this story the other day, but then I never posted it. Before reading, know that I love Jake; he is not any better or worse than any other 3 year old kid. Whether you have experiences like this, or know someone who has, I hope you can relate. Not everyone can have patience every minute of every day. Jake is an amazing kid with so many good qualities. He is kind, and sensitive, and becoming a big help around the house. He is also going through a phase…don’t think I’m terrible for writing about it.

Today I was thinking about patience. Why is it so easy to put up with any annoying sound one day and so hard to stand the crying, and begging, and constant nagging another day? Jake is going through a phase where he is talking nonsense a lot. He jumps up and down by me, or climbs all over me when I am sitting down…all the while saying “goo goo, backa. Lee lee lacka”. The heat of the day makes his hands sticky, and they stick to my hair and pull it out. Or he tromps on my feet with his bare feet (it feels like he takes a layer of skin off my foot.) Some days I take it better than others.
I know most of the causes of dwindling patience, but they are things I usually can’t avoid. For example, I’m in a hurry…Jake takes an hour and a half to eat breakfast (so maybe that is a slight exaggeration. He’s usually done in an hour). He can’t find his shoes, then he can’t put them on (thank heavens for crocs these days.) Then he dawdles his way out to the car, tries to take a quick spin on his bike, or play in the dirt by the garage. When I finally get him to the car, he jumps over the back seat giggling “you can’t catch me”. All this would be fun if I weren’t already late. If you are wondering why I didn’t just pick him up and fling him in the car seat from the start, it’s because I have Allie in one arm and I’m trying to find her shoes with the other. If I set her loose in the garage with him the results are usually disastrous. (They played in the oil pan for the ‘52 Chevy, Jake tipped off a precariously placed car seat onto Allie and the cement floor, Jake begins to drill holes in boxes, etc.) I can only say “come here, quick” so many times in a nice tone before I start to lose my mind.

So here’s the scenario tonight…Jake came out of the tub, dripping wet, dragging the towel behind him. I was getting Allie in her jammies, so I hadn’t even come in to scrub him yet. Now there are puddles of water everywhere, and a shivering boy standing there half washed. I told him to get back in the tub and I finished with Allie. Poor girl didn’t get bed time stories tonight because I don’t have the patience. I figured three songs makes up for it.
I got Jake on the changing table and he brought a blow up plastic baseball bat with him. He doesn’t like getting lotion put on, or to have his ears cleaned. So he was using the bat to bop me on the head in a teasing manner, wanting to engage me in something other than cleaning the potatoes out of his ear. Instead of asking him to stop, I yanked the bat out of his hands and flung it across the room. He started to cry (of course, instead of working it out, I compounded the problem). After crying for a minute, he decided to be the bigger person, and while I was ignoring the cries, he decided to use words. “It made me sad when you threw my bat” he repeated, until he got a response from me. I told him that I didn’t like it when he bopped me on the head. He said “oh…sorry”. Problem solved. On better patience days, I would have said “please don’t bop me on the head with that.” He would have said, “please don’t cram that q-tip up my nose” and things would have been solved.
I don’t know why I can handle things some days and not others, but I am trying to work on patience. I hope that in trying, I get a little better each day. Mike has been gone all week, and although it’s hard, I’ve been handling things well until tonight. I guess it’s all adding up.
Like I said, I know I have two great kids, and any kid out there can try their parent’s patience no matter how good they are. I feel better after venting, so I hope you all understand.

"That bird hit him"

Tonight Jake and I read a book called Snoopy’s Feelings. Each page has the word of one emotion and Snoopy acting it out. On the page that said “sad”, Jake asked why Snoopy was sad.
Me: “I don’t know, why do you think he’s sad?”
Jake: “That bird just hit him”
Me: confused for a second, then I realized that although he isn’t pictured, Jake remembers that Woodstock is Snoopy’s friend. He’s probably “that bird”.
The next page is “happy”
Me: “Now he’s happy!”
Jake: “why?”
Me: “I don’t know, what do you think?”
Jake: “the bird quit hitting him, and now he isn’t hurt anymore.”
Moral of the story…Jake gets hit by his little bird friend Allie a lot, and it makes him sad.

"Well, I just think you're swell"

When I was a kid, my dad spent lots of hours trying to brainwash me and my sisters. He would point out scummy looking guys and say that he wouldn’t let any of us girls marry guys like that. He’d say things like “you’ll come home with some guy like that, with tattoos and a motorcycle (he had a particular dislike of tattoos) and say ‘oh but Daddy, I love him’”. We would stare at the grungy guy and be filled with horror “Dad, don’t let me find a guy like that…” He’d tell me not to worry, that when I was old enough, he’d help me pick out a fine candidate for a spouse. I pictured a carriage ride down the handsome prince filled streets. I’d say “what about that one?” and dad would steer me to a better choice.
I don’t know if any other dads were this way, but my dad was afraid of all the roosters that were coming to raid his hen house (those were actually his exact words at my wedding luncheon). When my sister found a great guy to marry, my Dad gave him the run around because no one was good enough for his daughter. Luckily he realized that Ben is an amazing guy and loosened up after a while.
Anyway, while I was at girl’s camp, I was reminded of one of his philosophies and it made me smile. One of the girls at camp was telling her friends that some boy was saying “I love you” to her and she didn’t know what to say back because she didn’t love him. I told her that my dad taught me that you shouldn’t say “I love you” to a boy unless you liked him enough to marry him. Instead you just say, “well, I just think you’re swell.” They got a kick out of that and I proceeded to pass on the fine gems of knowledge that my Dad forced into my head about boys. For example, he taught me the “Johnson slip” (my maiden name is Johnson). That’s for when a boy comes in to give you a smooch, you duck under his arm and run away. I only put that to use on one boy…he was not kissing material. I also told them of one of the ironic twists in the brainwashing. Dad would drive us around the scummiest trailer parks in Utah County and threaten that if we didn’t pick a good husband out, we might end up there. Once again our eyes, wide with horror, took in the scene and we would beg Dad to help us pick out a good husband.
The ironic part is that when I married Mike, he took me home to a trailer in a trailer park. Granted, Mom and Dad gave us the trailer for 500 dollars and we fixed it up real nice (spoken with the accent of Cousin Eddy from the Christmas Vacation movie).
Anyway, the point of this very long and informative story is that apparently Dad’s wisdom is worth passing on. The mother of one of the girls at camp came up and told me of an incident she witnessed between her girls. The older one got a text message that ended with “I love you.” She said, “ew, what do I say to that?” The younger sister said “remember what Sister Schwab said? Just tell him that you think he’s swell.” I guess she did. The Mom thought it was great and said she liked that I told them not to be so free with their “loves”. Now all I need to do is take them for a field trip to our old trailer house and tell them that if they married the right guy, he might take them there…

Neighborhood Friends

Every day at around 10:00 and then again at 3:00 we are looking for distractions. Life has been a little busier lately, but we are usually outside everyday looking for friends. Our yard is an easy place to flock to because the hill is a natural boundary. With that and the fence, there is only one escape route to guard. Luckily for us Moms, it is in the shade. There are always battles, "she's using the blue shovel", "I wanted the green bucket", "Jake squirted us with the hose", "I wanted that swing", "He's throwing sand in my eyes", "wahh, wahh, wahh". But there are great times too. We laugh, tell stories, vent about things that make us crazy, and get great advise. The kids are learning to get along, and sometimes we get a kick out of watching them fight. (today Allie got caught hitting Lily, so she immediately pretended she was playing with her instead...it was one of those things we wish we had on tape.) I don't know where I'd be without our neighborhood friends.


Yesterday we were outside and all the kids were lined up on the tramp eating popsicles. I couldn't resist running in for the camera. I have loved watching these kids grow up from babies, and I wanted to get a picture of the kids Jake and Allie love to play with.

From left to right...Aubrey, Lily (who is usually dressed very cute, but fell off the swing earlier and got her clothes bloody, along with a sad fat lip...hence the popsicles) Allie, Jake, Ethan, Carson, and Joanna. This picture is one of 20 and believe it or not, this is the one with the most kids looking in the right direction. I have to laugh at how fast Jake and Aubrey ate their popsicles.

I also got a picture of the friends I love to play with...they will probably be annoyed that I'm putting them on the blog, but they are part of my life...they'll have to deal with it.

Left to right, Kristin, Karen, and Heidi. This is one of 5 pictures of them, and believe it or not, they were just as hard as the kids in looking my way.

If you are bored at around 3:00...come and play!

Bye bye dentures!

Allie has had these perfectly strait teeth that are all the same size for a long time now. 4 on top, 4 on bottom. We laugh that they look like little dentures. Well, her smile is about to change. Her eye teeth are finally poking out. It's only a matter of time before she looses that perfect little smile, so I thought I'd write about it...

The blog is taking over...

So, the other day when Allie got this thing stuck in her hair, I said "just a minute, hold still, I'll get it out in a minute" so I could stop to take a picture to post on the blog...

Does that make me a crazy blog nerd or what?

P.S. No children were hurt during the making of this post...she was annoyed, but not hurt. It's a bath toy with a little propeller on it. I finally had to just cut it out, so now she has a chunk of short hair in the back. I hope Allie remembers this next time she wonders what it would look like to add a beautiful green submarine thing as a hair accessory.
Lori...if you were wondering, this is the toy you gave her for her birthday last year...it's still a favorite!

Young Women Camp

On Monday I went to girl's camp with our ward. We are a new presidency, so I was really looking forward to camp because I wanted to bond with the girls. It was such a great experience.

We went to the Heber Valley Girl's Camp, and it was a beautiful place to go. It's 8,400 acres and was dedicated a few years ago as a place where the young women in the church can go and have spiritual experiences. They call it a temple without a ceiling.

We had waterfront, hikes, and a challenge course that was surprisingly scary for me.

I enjoyed every minute of it. The girls all got along. They told funny stories, sang silly songs, and bore powerful testimonies. I can't believe how much love I can feel for the girls in my ward.

I went home after testimony meeting, and was just in time to save Mike from the kids. Allie had painted with poo (her favorite medium), dumped laundry detergent all over herself and the house, fought with Jake, dumped dish soap all over the counter, etc. He was done, and I was refreshed. It was a really great week for me.

We got back on the horse!

We went boating again last Saturday and had a much better experience. There were no problems and it made all the difference in the world. Mike got the hang of driving, and I even water skied. He pulled me expertly and didn't even slow down in the turn.



Our old neighbors came with us and their kids had fun in the tube.





Allie and Jake were more interested in eating on the beach than riding in the boat.







Jake finally overcame his fear of the water, and ventured out further and further from shore.



Allie painted my legs with mud and tossed rocks.




It was just a great evening...

Our first time camping!

We had a really busy week last week. That's why I have tons of stuff to write about. It all started last Friday. We were eating dinner, and I said that I was excited for girl's camp because I love to be outside sitting at a fire, and being a little chilly. Mike said that we should take the kids camping, and it all just came together. We live in the lower part of the canyon, so it only took 15 minutes to get up to a place to camp. We had the tent pitched and a fire blazing an hour after we decided to go.

We took a short hike. Mike introduced the kids to these...

When we were dating, Mike told me to blow on one and make a wish...then he crammed it in my mouth. He didn't do that to the kids, but he didn't have to. Allie inhaled before every blow and ended up eating lots of seeds.

We found a slower part of the river and tossed rocks. I didn't bring mosquito repelent and was a little annoyed by all the bites. Jake and I must have the same sweet blood because they were after us, but passed by Mike and Allie. Jake stayed up scratching that night.

We discovered that none of us like s'mores. We like to eat the ingredients separately, but not together. So we just let Jake burn a few marshmallows.

The tent was the perfect size for our family. Is is still camping if you watch a DVD in the tent? We thought the kids would fall asleep to a movie, but the battery died and they were still awake...it was a long night.

We woke up in the morning and drove back home. It was really fun, and the best part was how easy it was to pick up and go. Now that the kids are getting a little older, we will have to do it more often. We didn't spend much time up there, but we did get a little bored...if any of you want to come up with us next time it would be more fun.