Fever Pitch

I've never been much of a runner. One of the many reasons I feel like a social outcast in the stay-at-home mom community. I've tried really hard to love it but I just....don't. On January 1, 2005 Blaine decided that he would run the St. George marathon that October. He wasn't much of a runner either. I sent him out on his first run with a big pat on the back and an enthusiastic "you can do anything you set your mind to Honey!!". He hobbled back heaving and ho-ing about five minutes later after having made it about half a mile.

He persisted though and his runs became longer and easier for him, until he was consistently running several miles a day. That summer we had the opportunity to live in Portland, OR (which ranks #2 on my "Places I Want to Live" list, right behind Round Rock, TX). Throughout that summer I would sporadically try to run. It usually didn't go well and would turn more in to a leisurely stroll.

Rarely did Blaine and I go running together because, well, what was the point? He would run at a much faster pace than me and he would actually, you know...run. But one day I was feeling particularly pudgy and I decided I would do my very best to go on a run with Blaine. I loaded Gwen up in the jogger and we were off.

It was sunny and warm, the scent of pine trees wafted through the air. I was at the top of my game. We started out kind of together but eventually, and you may want to sit down for this part, I got ahead of Blaine.

Now I had never actually gone running with someone and gotten ahead of them before. I am usually panting and puffing and clutching my side, urging for the sweet release of death. This feeling of leading the pack was absolutely invigorating. I found a strength deep within myself that I hadn't known existed before. I ran and I ran and I watched Blaine grow smaller and smaller in the distance. I had never felt so alive.

Now you might think that maybe Blaine wasn't trying. Oh, he was trying. I could tell. He looked how I normally looked during runs. Once we got home I went on and on about how wonderful I was, I had really shown him who was boss.

And that's when he nearly collapsed. And that is also when we took his temperature and saw that he had a 104dg fever. And then spent the night in the Emergency Room. Yeah.... that explained a lot.

And that was the last time I went running.

Zumba anyone?

Seek First to Understand

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity of working at Franklin Covey for several months right after finishing high school. I truly loved the job. It was a typical post-high school job, I took inbound sales calls. The beautiful thing though was that my shift was from 5AM-9AM every day. Being done with work by 9AM? That was something to rejoice about. Going to bed at 8PM though...was social suicide, but that's beyond the point.

One of the perks of being an employee of Franklin Covey was getting the chance to attend lots of seminars and things that other people had to pay hundreds of dollars to attend. For all of the seminars and motivational reading material I received there's only one thing that really stuck with me, "seek first to understand and then to be understood." I think that's one of the seven values of highly effective people, or something like that.

Even through my numbskull teenage head that phrase seemed profound. I made a concerted effort to apply it in to my daily life, and it's been my go-to wedding shower advice for nearly a decade.

It served me well when we were first married and Blaine was really really late getting home from work and I was worried (and we shared a cell phone - the horror! - so I had no way of contacting him). I was borderline call-the-police worried when he finally walked in the door. It's funny how as soon as you know the person you were worried about is safe that worry can turn in to anger real quick. Turns out he had stopped to help someone (or given someone a ride home and then stopped to help someone, something very selfless and kind), and I was sorry that I hadn't sought first to understand before I verbally assaulted him once he finally came in the door.

Anyway, I think it is a wonderful motto, seek first to understand and then to be understood.

Blaine just got home last night from a four day trip to Boston. A lot of yelling rang through the halls of our home while he was gone. Turns out single parenthood is emotionally taxing. And for some reason, completely beyond my scope of comprehension, I decided that while Blaine was gone would be a good time to dejunk Gwen and Bentley's room. After a very tiring day of sorting, cleaning, and dejunking I got to the last drawer of Gwen's dresser. And it that drawer, I found this...


*shudder*. What the WHAT? My mind raced thinking of how I had one time found an entire measuring cup full of sugar in her closet, all the candy wrappers I had found behind her bed, all the distrust she has earned recently. I assumed it was probably a hunk of cheese she had squirreled away to eat after bedtime and then forgotten about.

I took a breather, before berating her about sneaking food I decided to just try to seek first to understand. I asked her what it was.

Her response? "Your Mothers Day present!"

Boy did I feel loved. But then she continued, "remember a few weeks ago when we had pineapple with *salt on it and you wanted another piece but it was gone? I saved a piece for you to give to you for mothers day!".

Ahhhhh. See! Good thing I hadn't yelled at her, right? It was a sweet gift. I mean certainly what I want most of all for Mothers Day is for my kids to stop fighting for even just ten minutes, but a very close second is a moldy piece of pineapple that had been squirreled away with utmost care, remember it truly is all about the little things.

Happy Mothers Day, may you receive gifts as thoughtful (though hopefully not as smelly) as mine!


*Am I the only person who salts my pineapple, my husband and children think I am a such a freak show, but it is so much better that way!

Tutorial Tuesday

I mentioned a while back on facebeook that I was considering applying for a blogging position. I was really excited about it. I would love the opportunity to earn money from home while Blaine is in school. Well, I never applied. The main reason is because the blog was a homemaking blog. And that's great and all, since homemaking is my full time profession, but...I'm no good at it. As Kayla once noted, I write about the black eyes of homemaking, the epic fails. To be frank, I am kind of tired of that, of being the person who can't do anything.

I mean, I've tried photography. Fail.
I don't dress well. At all.
Can't grow a garden to save my life.
We all know that my handyman skills are dire, and that's being generous.

Everyone who is anyone (or at least anyone who is a stay at home Mom in the Mormon community) is good at something homemakery like. Take for example a small case study of my friends. We've got the photographer, the gardner, the fashionista, the crafter, and finally the decorator/crafter/entrepreneur extraordinaire; it kind of begs the question...what am I contributing to the world?

Well that's about to change folks. I present to you my first first do-it-yourself tutorial.

See I noticed the other day that the bottom of my stools were kind of scratching the wood floor. I knew Laurie, Kayla, Meleah, Ralphie, Janssen et. all would be able to solve this type of problem on their own, using their mad homemaking skills. So I figured it out by myself and took pictures along the way, so I could contribute.



Be edified my friends.

Homemade Floor Protecting Mittens

by: Kristi

First you will want to gather your needed supplies. I decided to repurpose all of the socks from our mismatched sock bucket.




Now, take the sock and place over the leg of the stool. Like so.


When sock is completely over stool leg...




Get a rubber band. Any kind will do. For this project I chose one of Ivy's hair bands.

(that's sparkly blue nail polish from the Easter Bunny, it looks really gross in this picture and I'd be lying if I said it looked better in real life.) Now, be careful here to not snap the rubber band. I found that doubling the elastic around twice, to make an 'x' pattern was very visually satisfying.


And voila! Now not only have you added to the warmth and loveliness of your home, accented your decor (and the random piles of laundry hanging around), but you've also protected your wood floors. And it didn't cost you a dime.


Go and feel validated in your homemakery my friends. I feel like an official crafty Mormon housewife now. Whew!

Fairies gone wild

And while on the topic of Gwen....she told me some of the kids had decorated their homework folders and asked if she could do the same. I consented, and I can only imagine how excited her teachers are to see this little number every day! Boom chicka wow wow!

Fred

You may have already heard how Gwen busted open Bentley's box of valentines and labeled them all "To: Gwen From : Bentley" but did you hear how she labeled all of her valentines?

I'm not sure who this Fred kid is, but apparently she has the hots for him :) Just kidding, I told her to label them all "To: Friend" but apparently I need to enunciate better : )

Important

You know, I'm a self professed bad teacher. I'm just not good at it. I have lots of talents (most of them have something to do with changing two diapers at a time), but teaching simply is not one of them. I've taken strides, however, to make sure that I teach my children the important things in life. That they are children of God, that they should be kind, to only buy things that are on sale, and so on. And every once in a while I get what I like to call a "parent payday" when the efforts of my tireless teaching and patience pay off. I got one of those yesterday. Now that Gwen is getting older we've tried to teach her about stranger danger and what to do if someone attempts to kidnap her. Yesterday, out of the blue, she wrote down a step by step plan for what to do if a "bad guy, or almost bad guy" tries to kidnap her.

Because many of you aren't fluent in kindergartenese I'll first rewrite what she wrote with her own spelling, and then I will interpret it for you.

1 AKT lik u dum kid
2 Yel Help!"
3 puch the priuris if is u Boy if is u grle puch hr in the nipl

And now, for those of you who use regular English rather than phonetic English

1. Act like a dumb kid
2. Yell help
3. Punch the privates if it's a boy, if its a girl, punch her in the nipple

It's nice to know that she is retaining the important things that we are trying to teach her : ) Also how cute that she puts a dot in between every word, attempted to use punctuation, and...I don't know, she's just so darn cute. And don't you dare try to kidnap my kid, unless you like a good punch to the nipple!

Surprise! I posted!

Well if I have learned one thing in my short life, it is that if I get behind on writing in a journal (or blog for this matter...) I will get intimidated and never start writing again. It's really sad isn't it? You keep thinking how you are going to just sit and catch up and write a thousand posts in a day but then you never do.

But the good news is I think the whole reason I haven't written is simply because I don't have time. First off I got a job! And it's a job blogging! Blaine's cousin owns a Utah real estate business. Did you notice how I made the link the key words that we are trying to get up on the google page for? See how I am learning all about SEO and so when I decide to become a rich famous blogger sometime I actually maybe can. I am also learning a lot about html* < / slight exaggeration > . So everyday I take Gwen to school, come home, wrasstle the young 'uns in to their naps (getting harder and harder) and then spend exactly two hours down here blogging on a real estate blog. Don't judge my posts yet, I am still getting the hang of it, and it is more factual than entertaining, but it's a start! My first humble paycheck is on the way.

And what will I do with that paycheck, you ask? Well, for starters I will put a deposit down on the SIXTY DOLLARS WORTH of donuts Blaine bought yesterday. You heard me.** He got a special clearance at work a few days ago and can now go in to a different part of the building and apparently you have to bring donuts (specifically not the crappy kind). We wound up taking gourmet donuts that cost their weight in gold. Anyway, let's let bygones be bygones.

Another reason I am busy is because I freaking LOVE the gym. Remember how I posted that one time about Zumba? Turns out, I LOVE IT! And also turns out that trying to fit the gym in while shuttling around a kindergartner is nearly impossible. But I'll be darned if I don't try. Anyway love zumba, and am trying to work up my courage to become an instructor. Not sure if they allow people with ZERO rhythm and coordination to actually teach, but I can't imagine a better job (if the whole real estate blogger thing doesn't pan out).

So.. it's been a while...over a month and then before that it was another month. It pains me, especially because for Christmas I printed out ye olde blog and gave it to Blaine and it made us happy that we have some documentation of our lives the past few years.

So, in honor of me getting overwhelmed and knowing deep down that I never will really catch up, I present, my list of things that deserve their own blog post but simply wont get one.

• Law School - Just the very words make my heart beat fast. To go or not to go? Blaine applied to ten schools, we've heard back from seven (all yes!) Blaine got full tuition scholarships to two (University of St. Thomas - not in St. Thomas, unfortunately, in St. Paul, big difference AND Baylor), and a meager scholarship to another (George Mason in DC) we've yet to hear from University of Texas, University of Washington and University of Colorado (ironically our three big dream schools). My thoughts? Wellllllllllllllllllllllll, originally I was the reason we started this whole thing because I wanted to get back to Austin, RIGHT then. Life was miserable (a true blue depression I've decided, brought on by a big move, a friendless ward, a dark basement, financial woes, having three young children at home - one who was really really ready for school- and last but certainly not least, really bad renters). Last March we got new renters, then in June we moved to a beautiful non-basement house, I got some friends (Hello Bunko Group, Dinner Swap, Movie Nights!), Gwen started kinder (hello sweet sweet freedom) and so on. Turns out being not depressed is freaking awesome. So I kind of hesitate to shake things up again, because we always shake things up just when they start getting to awesome. But I agree higher education is important and I want to do this, but then again.....how are we going to afford things like...oh say diapers, let alone insurance for the children. Anyway, look at how I sneakily turned this in to its own blogpost within a blogpost. Sorry, won't happen again.

• Bentley got a $1 watch for Christmas and it has turned in to his personal decision maker. He'll be like "Mom! My watch says it's time to go to a movie!" or "Mom! My watch didn't say that it is naptime, so I am NOT taking a nap". I kind of hate that thing, but I am super impressed that he keeps it on him at all times. If I could only be that way with my keys.

• Turns out my incredibly trustworthy daughter is not so trustworthy (guess I should have figured that out last year). She's been snitching up a storm. It started out with me finding finger marks in the sugar bowl. Then a bunch of Valentine candy wrappers in her room, and culminated in me finding a sugar encrusted measuring cup on a back shelf in her closet. I don't even want to think about how full it had been and how fast she ate an entire cup of sugar. Anyway, any awesome parenting tips? Do I lock every cupboard? Forbid her from going in the kitchen? I'm a bit at a loss. She is big enough to get in to everything if she wants to.
  

• I am a professional matchmaker. Remember the last ward I was in? How I kind of only made one friend? On about the first time I met the friend I found out she had a single, handsome, awesome brother and as it turns out, I have a single, awesome, amazing sister-in-law. A few weeks later I had a bday party for Ives(uh, nickname for Ivy) and my sister-in-law came as did Katie (the friend), when Katie met Janey she gave the go ahead to her brother to call her up. And they are totally getting married in June. Aren't I amazing? And won't they be conflicted on September 23, October 23 and December 9th (read hyperlink)?

• I would be remiss if I didn't say something about IJ. Where did that girl come from? She is about the naughtiest two-year-old I've ever met, but she has the guise of an angel. She looks like she is about 12 months old (though she is now over two), still barely has hair and what she does have is all cornsilky and blonde, gorgeous blue eyes, but a fiery fiesty temper that will scare the bejeebies out of you. You would just have to see it to believe it. So naughty. And on the bright side her new favorite phrases are a) "HELP ME" and b) "______ hit me! Help!" no one actually hits her, so..... its made for some awkward situations, especially because if I say "no, Bentley didn't hit you, he's not even in the room" "her eyes open wide, her lips start to quiver and she says, "MOMMY hit me! Help" so if I get hauled away for child abuse ... I swear, I didn't do it, she is just playing the innocent youngest child a little too well. I bought her a leash for her second birthday and life has been happier since. What a crazy child. I love her though, too much for words!
  

So there you have it a brief (kinda) synopsis of where I've been, what I'm doing, and the plights of everyday motherhood. Now I can write another post of things that I am doing that you should be doing too, without feeling guilty about shamelessly plugging programs that I get rewards for.

Is anyone even still out there? If I promise to write more will you come back? I have funny stories, they still happen every day....lots of them involve poop, I promise I'll share! Missed you guys. Okay, peace out.

*The funny thing is that I tried to do the opening and closing tags for that sentence as a joke, but it kept doing funny things, like striking out my whole post, so really I have quite a bit more to learn about html : )

** Note the vagueness, because I kind of am in fear that Russian Spies will read that and come kindnap Blaine, I promise it's not THAT BIG OF A DEAL. Geez, I am kind of nervous though. Stupid blog anonymity, I crave you!