Midnight Oil

You may not know this about me, but I was a pretty good student. I know. Hard to believe. Especially given the greeting I was by my high school counselor "Oh, you're Shawn/Todd's sister....so, when ya gonna drop out?". [Note: Both of my brothers have gone on to be pretty darn successful in their life, after a few little obstacles to overcome, I am very very proud of them]. Regardless they left a lot to be desired as far as someone following them through school. Anyway, I was in "honor" classes and I did just fine (my more mature self is now horrified that such distinctions as "honor classes" are even made....that's another blog post for another day). Fact of the matter is, I did nearly as well as Blaine, which is quite comical if you consider our different approaches to school.
About a week after our first essay was due in AP English our teacher thought it wise to read us an example of a really good essay and an essay that could use some work (I think she called it a "disgraceful" essay). Turns out she read Blaine's essay as the good example and my essay as the bad example. And the end of the year she took us all out in to the hall individually and told us if she thought we would do well on the AP test. I peeked through the keyhole when Blaine went out there, as soon as the door shut behind him he and the teacher just looked at each other and laughed and busted open some oreos. Of course he was going to ace the test. When I went out she had a somewhat somber look on her face .... "I hate to tell you this but.....I am not 100% sure you should even take the test". Well I sure showed her. In the end Blaine got a 5 (highest you can get), and I got a 4. Boo-yeah.
The thing is, he and I take a different approach to school. I am more of a "Laissez-faire" type person. I am very motivated by deadlines, but usually not until the deadline is...say... 12 hours away or less. Blaine is quite the opposite. I remember his first semester at BYU he came home one day and was working on a paper, he was quite stressed about it and I later found out it was a three page paper that was due more than a month from the time. Three pages? Puh-lease. I don't start those until two hours before they are due. He drew up drafts of that thing, did several rewrites, sent it to relatives to proof read, etc. Whoa. Opposites attract I guess.
This strategy of mine only became a problem my last semester of college when I was taking 400 level courses in Sociology. I would go to class, try really hard to listen, but man, it was like the professor was speaking gibberish. Anyway, somehow through all of his mumbo jumbo I got that we were supposed to write a 30 page paper on how Modern Jihadism related to the feminist movement. Yabbity whobity whatty? Oh well, four months to mull that one over. This also happened to be the semester that Gwen was conceived and consequently the semester I became familiar with all of the restroom stalls/garbage cans on campus. Who had time to worry about Jihadism. So, yup, I wrote my thirty page paper the day before it was due. When I got it back the teachers notes were pretty sad, he very nicely said that my paper was a strange combination between plagiary and nonsense. Exactly. Comparing Jihadism with the feminist movement is nonsense and it was a lot of work even finding someones thoughts to plagiarize. Sheesh. Give me some credit.
So what does this have to do with you and my life in the here and now? Well, nothing really to do with you (other than I apologize because I still do not believe in proof reading and that's got to be annoying for you). Well, Gwen had a homework assignment due for the first day of class. Five pages on construction paper where we were supposed to glue pictures of herself, her pets, her house, whatever. Fine. Sounds easy. I can slap some pictures on there and have her color something. Gwen and Blaine stayed home sick from church on Sunday and I left them with the simple task to do Gwen's homework. When I got home I was thrilled to hear that they spent the whole time working on it. "Let's see it!" I said eagerly. Blaine glanced nervously around "well, there's nothing to actually see yet". "Uhhh. What?". He showed me that they had a rough draft of their ideas for what would go on each page and had narrowed down our selection of pictures (for these five pages) to a mere 100.
Needless to say, we didn't finish Gwen's homework in time. Blaine wanted thoroughness, and I wanted to comply but I am such a dang procrastinator. My daughter is doomed to failure because a perfectionist married a lazy person, and the lazy one is the one that stays home and has a deep fear of disappointing her perfectionist.
Maybe I don't have to be too concerned though because when all was said and done, I graduated with a better GPA then Blaine. Let that be known (hmmmm.....Electrical Engineering vs. Sociology....that's a fair comparison, right?).

Pumpkin Pie Surprise

Last night we invited some friends over to eat homemade pumpkin pie, as in made from actual pumpkins. Blaine has a thing for pumpkins and really enjoys roasting the seeds and making pies from scratch. Last week at the store they had pie pumpkins in stock, so the festivities of 2008 have officially begun (they were supposed to begin with pie pumpkins grown in our own garden, but we all know what happened to that).
So our friends come over and their cute daughter is playing with our cute daughter when all of the sudden their daughter starts screaming. Our friend ran upstairs to find that she had jammed a thermometer in her ear....on no big deal right? Yeah luckily I had written in marker on the thermometer "rectal only". Who keeps rectal thermometers laying around in their kids rooms? That's disgusting. In my defense, Gwen was sick and I had used the thermometer recently, but still.
Anyway, the pumpkin pie was very good, but if it was good enough for our friends to overcome the severe lack of hygiene in this house, only time will tell!

One in a googleplex

So today I had a kitkat (just a little fun size one. Okay, three fun size ones), but they forgot to put the wafer in, so it was just chocolate. Weird. And that, my friends, is why I am afraid of airplanes. No ones perfect, sooner or later you forget to put the wafer in the kit kat.

Family Portrait

Well not really. The thing is, I want to post a picture of my new hairdo but I am currently sporting a premature double (er....triple) chin and until I reach the point in my pregnancy that normal people start to "show" I am not putting pictures of me up. Sorry. Anyway, my hair is black. Practically. Dark dark dark. The thing is though, I love it! It was a little shock when I got home and looked in the mirror...and my first thought was "Adams Family!". It's growing on me though. I'm not such a big fan of the cut. Well, I like it just fine, but I kind of wish it were a little shorter and I think to make it look good I will have to get a straightening iron, and the only kind of straightening iron that works on these poofy locks is a Chi, and those are expensive and....you know the story. So there you have it. I went darker and a little shorter and you'll just have to visualize until I can figure out how to photoshop my little friends dangling from my chin.

$0.99 update

Okay, I just have to revise....I just checked my junk e-mail (I have a whole junk e-mail address that I check like once every two months...really it is a great idea, anytime I sign up for anything I just use that address, it's nice) anyway and I noticed one of the headlines was that Arby's is temporarily reintroducing the Arby-Q sandwhich, for only $.99. Awesome. And I totally sound like a fast food junkie, which I am not, but hello, for a dollar? Can't be beat.

Rules in "sneaking"

A couple days ago Gwen came upstairs and said. "Mom, I'm sorry". When I asked her why she was sorry she told me that she was sorry she "sneaked" some of the treat I made. I thanked her for admitting that she snuck and then went downstairs and I had to laugh. Let's just say if she hadn't admitted guilt right away I probably would have been able to guess the guilty party. My hints were 1- chair pulled up along side the counter 2- a piece the size of my pinky nail missing right from the middle of the pan and finally, and most obviously, 3- her tool of choice, the hot pink kids knife.

Blaine and I have often joked around about why they sell baby spoons with little plastic knives in the set. Is Bentley, who requires a spoon with a capacity smaller than a dime, really going to be using a knife to cut up his feast?

Turns out those plastic little knives are useful!

Well, we made it back from Corpus Christi, safe and sound and in one piece. It was a fun trip and here are some highlights.

* Crashing in our hotel room when we first got there at 4:30PM and ten minutes later, just as we had all fallen asleep some random woman coming in our hotel room with all of her luggage. She had her own key. And apparently she had already checked in and had just left for an hour. I don't know who was more surprised. Since we were sleeping in the bed already we kept the room, which was rather unfortunate because it really really smelled like something had died in there. It. was. disgusting. Everytime we walked in we had to plug our noses. Too bad Blaine and I are so passive and didn't walk down and demand a new room.

* Gwen sleeping on the Lazyboy. Priceline has been good to us but you never know what you are going to get. This time we had a queen bed and no sofa bed. Bummer. Since we only have one portacrib Gwen resorted to sleeping on the lazyboy. What an adaptable child. I don't know what we'll do with three kids. Maybe we will just have to lug around three port a cribs wherever we go. Or. Gasp. Pay full price for a hotel room. (Never!).

* Going to the Corpus Christi beach and running for the water only to be tackled by a family who warned us that the waters were jelly fish infested. Which was really true. There were hundreds washed up on the beach and you could see the water was thick with them. Just so everyone knows, when I raved about the Corpus Christi beach before, I meant the Port Aransas beach....the actual Corpus Christi beaches are all infested with jellyfish, quite freaky.

* Eating at "mama-citas" mexican restaurant....where they charge $1.50 for a can of pop and the toilets were not attached to the ground. That's right. Had I seen the restrooms before we had sat down and started eating chips and salsa....actually though the food was good and we'll just pretend there was a real nice employee restroom. With soap....and stuff.

* Bentley not sleeping at all the first night. Not one wink.

* Wow, all of these memories are making it sound like a bad trip....it really wasn't. Besides, who remembers trips where things go perfectly?

* Going to sacrament in Corpus and then leaving, Gwen asking "why aren't we going to primary" and us trying to come up with a righteous way of saying, "because we are going to the beach instead". Umm.....

*Driving to beautiful Port Aransas and dreaming of the day we buy a beach house there.

* Setting up our little beach tent shade thing to find, only ten minutes later that we had set it up to a little miniature Yellowstone National Park. Seriously there was this weird bubbling thing in the water and all the sudden it started stinking and I kept thinking any minute we would all be blown to smithereens in Texas' own Old Faithful : )

* Building sandcastles, riding waves, giving myself a mud wrap. Bentley's bloated ocean water diaper. Frozen Capri Suns.

* Gwen, upon hearing we were ready to pack up and go home, taking her swimming suit completely off and refusing clothing and towels and running around the beach nude. It was so weird. She simply did not care, and we really did care.....but she was so fast!

*Eating at Texas Roadhouse and BJs Pizza

*Driving home in a tense silence because I had asked Blaine for a bite of his orange chicken, and then I asked for one more bite and then he said something about me eating all of his chicken and then I made some reference about how if we were lions and it were his job to kill the food and share it with me I would starve....and then, I don't know, can you get PMS while your pregnant? I was really mad that he was really mad that I wanted to eat his orange chicken. And I stayed mad for a really really long time. Like, almost ten hours.

*Bentley learning to shake his head no. It starts....

*Stopping at SeaWorld on the way home from Corpus and since it was like a bajillion degrees outside no one was there. So Gwen got to go on the kid rides over and over. Oh and there was a cute little baby beluga whale that was following it's mom around during the dolphin show and messing with the synchronized swimmers. It was awesome.

*Pulling in to Austin at 9, eating at Firebowl (you should go there), and dragging our tired kids home and sticking them in bed. And then getting in bed. And getting mad at Blaine because he thought we should unload the car first, but I thought we should just go to bed and that I could do it myself in the morning and he thought that I really wouldn't do it in the morning and I thought that was rude and.....what if we were lions and going on vacation......

Pregnant people are so weird.