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 : )