Love

My sister is 14 years older than me. So I never knew the joys of being chokeholded by her for photos. It seems like it would have been really fun though. Kill him with kindness Gwen, kill him with kindness.

Runaway Social Sausage!

Okay folks we have the opportunity of a lifetime here. Apparently Blaine's work is having a 5k tomorrow that you have to be wearing your Halloween costume to participate in....and am I the only one who thinks it would rock the casbah to have the "social sausage" running through the streets of Austin? Blaine joked about it this morning but I told him if I got a petition with twenty five signatures requesting the sausages appearance that he would have to do it. At first I was going to give you all his work e-mail address so we could innundate his e-mail with friendly requests but then I thought that one through and decided it's a no go. So please please, leave a comment requesting (demanding) that he participate, for the good of the blog. He checks the blog daily and surely he would not want to disappoint all of my avid readers (*crickets chirping*).

Thanks!

Fe Fi Faux Pas

We had the opportunity to be hosts for Blaine's employer this weekend. This involves taking potential employees out and around town and to dinner etc. It's extra fun when the recruit has a wife because I get to be in on all of the action. So we were all at this nice dinner on Friday night and I was kind of situated in a weird spot right in the middle of the two tables in our group. I was going back and forth between conversations and trying to be socially delightful (which is hard for someone who's social calendar is full of things like going to Chick-fil-a and wiping snot off of children's faces during dinner). I was in a conversation on the one table and then overheard someone on the other table say, "I don't like pop". I thought, well now, that's a shame. I love pop. I should really say something in defense of pop. So I leaned over and like a drunkerd said, a little too loudly and robustly, "Well? Have you ever tried Cherry Coke??" the conversation halted like, instantaneously and Blaine, who had been involved in the conversation, looked at me like I was insane. Then after a minute, I was like "well? Have ya?" and the guy responded with saying something like, "I said I don't like hip hop". Awkward. They were totally talking about music and I totally halted two separate conversations to blurt out random comments about caffeinated beverages at a table full of BYU people. Awesome. Blaine said this might be the last time I get to "help" him with his job. If he still has a job.

.

A Case Study

I was able to teach the Young Women's lesson in our ward today. I hate teaching. I am not good at it (don't you dare say I am, it's okay to not be good at somethings, and it's okay to admit it and even embrace it : ). Anyway though I had a busy week I spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing the lesson. It was such a pity when I left my lesson at home. You can't tell me a good teacher does that! Luckily I did remember to bring all of my visual aids and I was able to remember most of what I wanted to talk about. I prepared a "case study" for my lesson that I thought you might enjoy... feel free to take the test and I will post the answers later...


Case Study #1

Sister Tessab* is going to be teaching a Young Woman’s lesson on health habits on Sunday. She knows a lot about health and nutrition, though she doesn’t always put her knowledge to practice. In honor of her giving this lesson on Sunday Sister Tessab tried to be extra careful with her eating habits during the week. Newg, her daughter, turned four on Thursday and Sister Tessab bought the family a pizza to celebrate. Knowing that pizza has lots of calories, Sister Tessab choose the Veggie pizza and only ate two pieces (instead of the three that she wanted), and then had two cupcakes for dessert (they were small cupcakes after all). Later she researched just how many calories she had eaten. It turns out that each slice of pizza had 350 calories! That’s 700 calories of pizza , and each cupcake had 150 calories, that is 300 calories of cupcakes. That is a total of 1000 calories! How long will sister Tessab have to exercise to work off this simple meal that took her only twenty minutes to consume?

Walking her dog __________________

Playing Volleyball ____________________

Swimming Laps ______________________

Playing the accordion __________________

Running ___________________

Oh wait! Sister Tessab, due to excruciating lower back pain (due to being pregnant), doesn’t do any of those things! How long will it take her to work of the calories by….

Sweeping the floor __________________

Washing the dishes __________________

Vacuuming _________________________

Ironing __________________________

*Names have been changed.

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Also, it took me printing this out THREE times before I made sure it said "Tessab" every time. Which reminds me, for my entire marriage (going on six years now), I have always said my name "Bassett, you know, like the dog", and I just found out like six months ago that "Bassett" like the dog is really "Basset". Whoops.

My day.

Gwen turned four.
Gwen threw up.
I threw up.
Some birthday.

(however, it must be said, that life as a working person as opposed to a student person is much more friendly to sickness. Blaine was able to stay home and help us all day and it was so nice. He even shampooed the carpets. Which were in desperate need, for obvious reasons).

The truth comes out....

I'm here to tell you, I LOVE MY DOGS. I know, you're thinking no, you don't. I am an avid blog reader and one of every five entries is about how much you DISlike your dogs. Well, friends, I love them. Here are some of the many, many, MANY reasons I do.

*They don't shed. Really they don't. There isn't dog hair stuck on my couch, on my floor or anywhere. They don't shed.

* They clean up the floor. Seriously. When you weigh a million and three pounds it's hard to bend over to clean up messes left by a certain male child who has no problem flinging his steamed peas across the kitchen if they aren't cooked to his satisfaction. With Swiper and Boots around all we have to do is invite them in to clean up after Bentley has eaten and whalaaaa, sparkling clean floors. Sanitary? Maybe not, but clean, yes.

* They're funny to watch. Really. Swiper tries to bury his bones in my couch. Not like rip up the couch but he shoves his bone in the crevice between cushions. Funny.

* They are gentle with the children. Bentley can pull on Boots beard. Gwen can dress them up like baby dolls and they take it all in stride. Nary a growl to be heard.

* When they run away they *usually* come back all on their own with little or no effort on my part.

* FREE security system. Could any bad guy penetrate the fortress of security that is Swiper and Boots. Not likely my friends, not likely.

* They love us. For how much we used to talk about selling them, they sure do forgive quickly.

*When Bentley decided he didn't like the expensive baby meat sticks I bought him, the dogs came to the rescue by deeming me a superhero every time I gave them one.

Moral of the story? You want to watch my dogs while we go to Utah for Christmas. Really, you'd love it. We can't afford a kennel and both of our parents were less than thrilled at the idea of having house guests with four legs. Blaine suggested that perhaps the reason no one wants to take in our boarders is that I only say negative things about them on the blog, and I thought...true. So here's saying. LOVE the dogs. *You* would love the dogs. I know it.

True Friend

I've dedicated entire posts to how much I love Laurs before. So I'll try to keep it short and just say that a true friend is one who will send you a picture like this . . . .



at a time when she knows you feel like you look like this.....


Thanks Laurs. I feel inspired to grow out my hair. The funny thing is, I know that for my entire life I never felt pretty. Oh man if I would have known how cute I really was : )

The most wonderful time of the year...

My favorite thing about Halloween (besides the candy) is that I get to pull out this picture....


and remind myself how awesome I am that I have a husband that once made a polish sausage costume out of grocery bags.

Now that's creative!

Would it smell as sweet?

Meet Adilyn Paige Bassett. Isn't she lovely?



You may know her as Gwen Genessy Bassett...(don't ask what happened to the mop of black hair, I'm not quite sure...)


But see, she was "Adi" all the way up until the day she was born. I have video to prove it. I have doodles to prove it. But she just....wasn't Adi. We didn't want her to be in a long line of "Abby"s and "Maddi"s etc. So we tried to come up with something a little less common right at the last minute, quite literally. And I couldn't be more pleased. I love the name Gwen, and I love who she is named after, and I LOVE the response I get when I tell people her name.

So that is why I don't name my kids in utero. Because then they might come out and be something else and it throws everyone off. My mother, on more than one occasion, referred to newborn baby Gwen as "Adi" and who could blame her, we had been calling her that for months.

So, it isn't that I am afraid that you will steal our favorite name. In my opinion, names are public domain. If you feel like your kid needs to be named Gwen, and your other kid needs to be named Bentley, that is fine by me! Even if you were my sibling and you used the same name, no offense taken. Seriously. I don't know why it is such a big deal, someone somewhere, no matter how creative your parents are, will have your same name. It's okay.

The reason I don't really like to tell people the names we are considering is I am afraid I will respond to their reactions. Say there is a name I really like and they really don't like it, it might make me reconsider using it. For example, I really like the name Hugh for a boy, we didn't use it --- partly because of an overwhelmingly negative vibe when I told people about the name. A few months later someone near and dear mentioned they were considering the name. What the? Had I known that someone else in the universe liked the name I may have been more likely to use it.

Anyway, I am kind of stumped with girl names. When I was pregnant with a boy I thought of how easy it would be to name a girl, now I am kind of in a pickle. It definitely is more fun to name a girl, and since this may be our last child, we should really make it count.

So don't tell me if you hate any of these names, but you could tell me like your top three in order from my choices. And maybe put like four stars if you are totally in love with the name. Or if there is some really cool girl name out there that you think I should know about you could list it too. And I might throw in some random names that I don't really like in here, just for kicks. Okay. Here we go....

Ivy
Gretchen
Paige
Marlow
Bailey
Millie (Amelia)
Josie
Bruhmhilda
Lucy
Lydia
Tru
Marla


Top three please...and no sassy remarks ( Ralphie ). Thanks.

Good as dead.

I read an article this morning on "15 surprising reasons you may live longer than you think". I've got news for them, those 15 reasons surprised me, mostly because I didn't qualify for very many. So say your goodbyes and be really nice to me, because I am on a downhill ride my friends. Wouldn't you know I couldn't find the article again when I went looking for it, but here's what I remember.

#1: If you were born before your mom was 25 you are twice as likely to live to 100, did you know that?

My mom was thirty eight. All those prime eggs had been gone for years by the time I made my late entrance. Strike #1. And as a side note, good thing I am getting all of my kids here quick, eh?

#2 You drink red wine and eat lots of blueberries. No to the wine and I don't know that I've ever actually had a blueberry, are they good? I guess I am supposed to be eating a cup a day of them.

#3 You don't drink soda. Whoop-sie. I heart cherry-coke. And Dr. Pepper. And especially Mr. Pibb.

#4 You walk thirty minutes a day. I walk up the stairs and then have to take a thirty minute power nap...so really the whole process takes thirty one minutes, does that count?

Oh man, that's like all I can remember. There were like seven more that were bad. There were a couple that were good though. ..
*If you went to at least one year of college (woohoo!) apparently people who went to one year of school live 18 months longer than those who don't-- so while you feel like you are wasting your life studying, don't worry, you'll get that time back when you are playing bingo in the retirement home, totally worth it!

*If you don't eat a lot of read meat (thank you pregnancy!).

*If you have skinny friends (anyone every seen a picture of Ralphie? Let's just say I call her "Twiggy") . Except I am not 100% sure that my skinny friend one counts because this particular skinny friend has upped by butter consumption by like ten thousand percent since I have known her. So that may be a strike against me.

*Oh and if you were a healthy weight teen. Why yes, I was. Then I got married and that ruined everything (see post:portion distortion).

What was funny was that the last one was that you live longer if you feel good about yourself. I usually do feel pretty good about myself, but I guess reading that article knocked like five years off of my lifespan, thanks a lot!

Portion Distortion

Blaine and I did weight watchers in the summer of 2006. It was great. I was able to get rid of those stubborn last few (er....TWENTY) pounds from my pregnancy with Gwen and Blaine lost 21lbs in three weeks! We were only on the program for five weeks but both felt tremendously happy and beautiful (or handsome as the case may be) afterwards. We haven't formally participated in WW again, but we have tried to keep using the things we learned during our five week stint.

One thing Blaine has always been proud of is that he only has one bowl of cereal in the mornings. He figured out that a level bowl of cereal is two servings about and he tops it with coffee creamer instead of sugar. Anyway, this morning I noticed that I think that his "one bowl" of cereal habit is getting a little extreme. . . .



I don't know if you can tell but those bad boys are soaring about two inches (at least) over the rim of the bowl, but gall darn it he only has one bowl of cereal in the mornings! So get off his back : )

Newfound Profession

While out garage sale-ing last weekend I came across this book in a box for a quarter.




Funny how about six months ago I paid nearly twenty dollars for the same book.

See, this is the book that we are using to teach Gwen to read and I looooove it. Very good book. Very worth the twenty dollars.

So what did I do?

I bought the book for a quarter, and listed it on ebay, and today it sold for about $18.50. It cost me a quarter, the envelope to mail it will cost a dollar, shipping will be about two dollars and ebay fees about fifty cents. So it cost me in all $3.75, so that is nearly a $15 profit.

And guess what, fifteen dollars is how much money I spent all day on saturday garage sale-ing. And I got

3 really cute dresses for Gwen
1 pair of pants that actually fit Gwen
1 pair of Sketchers shoes for Gwen
1 pair Robeez for Bentley (um, those are $40 new)
about 10 items for the new baby (quarter a piece, sa-weet)
board game for Gwen
Leapfrog learning computer thing that teaches numbers for Gwen.

Not too bad for a quarter (technically)


I heart garage sales.

Conference project...

I know how you all love it when I step up onto my soapbox and preach to you about my world views. I try to keep my blog pretty neutral and to not weigh in on important topics or spout of my political views or whatever, but I do have to say, again, that I think you should recycle. It's only a dollar a week if you live in the city where I live. A dollar for a bin that they will come to your house and empty for you. Plus, then you save on garbage bags, like not kidding, we use one garbage bag every trash day now instead of like three. I hope you feel guilty every time you throw away a milk bottle or cereal box. The end.

In that line of logic comes my great and magnificent conference project. I want to stop using plastic bags. I am totally won over by the reusable shopping bag idea. The ones they sell though are too small and I think I can do one better. I am going to make my own reusable shopping bags out of my old, destroy the world, shopping bags. It's going to rock. Now I just need to find a mentor who will help me learn to crochet. I think Gretchen is going to, and that's why Gretchen rocks (and also because she can make sushi). So anyway, tomorrow for conference I am going to cut and tie my bags into yarn. Wish me luck.

Here is the project :
http://backyardfarming.blogspot.com/2008/09/saving-earth-one-bag-at-time.html

* My apologies to all of you who read on google reader and get the previous edition of the post in which the link took you to a post about killing chickens. I don't kill chickens, at least not on conference weekend. I have my standards.

Cheaters never prosper....

A month or two ago I saw this video on a blog and like the rest of American laughed at the plight of the poor woman involved and marveled at her vocal skills.

Then just a couple of weeks ago I heard the horrendous sound of her voice again, but only this time it was coming from me! Seriously, this is the sound of someone who has just dropped a glass jar on their second to smallest toe. It's a sound no one should have to make. The sound of toes breaking.

Very sad. And a little funny. You shouldn't cheat when smashing grapes.

Genius

Conversation between Blaine and I approximately 17 months ago- April 2007
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Me: "Wow, this is an amazing deal we found on the Accord. A 36 month lease for only (insert really good monthly payment here, think lower two hundreds) and hardly anything down. Really, it's a steal"

Blaine: "Yeah and to think we will be driving a nice car for three years and then we will probably just buy it at the end because we love it SO much, that or else maybe in three years we will be considering leasing a van and we can just trade it in."

Kristi: "Yeah maybe we will need a van in three years, even if we still only have two kids it would be nice for traveling back and forth to Utah, but surely, surely we won't need one before three years [lovingly caress my pregnant belly]"

Blaine: "This is perfect and we are perfect and we are so happy, let's kiss"

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Conversation from Blaine and I in April of 2008-- five and a half months ago

Me: My car [a 1998 Chrysler Cirrus] is a heaping pile of crud. I think we should get me a new car.
Blaine: Yes, love muffin, we should!
Me: We could look at vans, I know it's a little early but maybe we should consider it [spirit whispering "YES, consider it, we have a surprise for you!"]
Blaine: Yeah, cool.
Me ( after hours of research and looking at the possibility of gas being $4 a gallon minimum): You know, I was thinking, maybe we should just get you a commuter car that gets great gas mileage . We won't need a van until the Accord's lease is up and then we will save money and maybe by then we will actually be able to afford a van.
Blaine: You are so smart, and so pretty. I am the luckiest man alive.

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Conversation in June of 2008

Me: Surprise, we're pregnant....again.
Blaine: What?
Me: [Pointing to belly for emphasis] "You DA MAN"
Blaine: wow.
Me: wow.

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Conversation between Blaine and I in September 2008 two days ago

Me: You know what? It's okay that I will have to cram three kids in three carseats in the back of our accord. The accord is pretty big and it's only for like three months until the lease is up.
Blaine: Yeah. Good thinking. You are the hero here, that will be a pain but I am so happy that you are willing to do it.

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Conversation Yesterday
Me: Am I an idiot? Our lease isn't up THIS coming April it isn't up until April 2010. I am not lugging around three children in three carseats in the back of an Accord for a year and a half!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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So somehow in my mind since I have been pregnant I have not been too stressed about the car situation because, really like I will be going anywhere the first three months, and I guess I just forgot that we signed a THREE year lease instead of a TWO year lease. Hmmmm. Actually I think my mind is still adjusting to the fact that, yes, I really am having another baby and as a coping strategy it has skipped a year in it's thinking.

So the big question is.... what now? We love the Yaris! He gets like 36 mpg in that baby and it is so darn cute, but it's the only car we own.

Moral of the story? Don't forget how long your lease is. And use at least three methods of contraceptives unless you own a van.

Oh but I do think it is important to note, since I was so careful to always alert you to how overwhelmed and discouraged I was feeling about this pregnancy, that I am very excited to have this little baby. I wouldn't trade my situation for anything (now that the worst part of pregnancy is over!). I can't wait to meet her, and surely life will be crazy for like.....well, for the rest of it, but I love my kids a ton (really I think I may love them more than any other mom loves their kids), and I love this one too. Even though my back already hurts every second of every day : )

Now the question is, how am I to carry on in my "gallavanting around town" lifestyle when I can't fit my entire brood in one car. I had the great idea that Blaine should ask NI for a donation towards a van. See they bought the Wilkinson's one when they had their baby. Alright, so they had five babies.....all at one time. But still, we don't need them to buy the whole van, but we were thinking maybe 2/5ths would be fair. Ha. Kidding. We'll just walk. Wait. I don't have a triple stroller. Hmmm....must keep pondering.