Neverland

The other night I was at Young Women in Excellence and an awesome talk was given by a sister in our ward. I enjoyed it so much and started thinking back and realized I also really enjoyed the talk this same sister gave at stake conference, and also the lesson she had given at enrichment a few weeks earlier. I full blownly admire this sister in our ward. I caught myself thinking, " I want to be like her when I grow up" and then, for the first time in my life, I realized that I AM grown up. And I had a little freak out.

Blaine also pointed out today that my strong desire to remain youthful crossed into absurdity when the last time I went to the store I bought Teen Spirit deodorant. To me, Teen Spirit, is still the epitome of cool. I mean, who doesn't want to smell like "pink crush" you know? I'd rather that than "powder fresh" or whatever old people deodorant smells like. I can see why Matthew McCounaghey just gave up on the whole thing all together.

Also a couple of months ago when my neighbor came and Mary Kayed me up she was showing me the different products. I was asking her about the moisturizer and cleaning products line that they have targeted for teens. She squinted her eyes, peered into my face and just said, "oh no, you're going to want the anti-aging formula". Anti-aging? Me? What?

Not sure when it happened, but I got old. I know, at twenty six it is not like I am laying on my death bed or anything, but still...I am running out of time to become the person I always thought I would somehow get around to being. I'm not the young mom in the ward anymore. I have a full blown family....soon to be even bigger than it already is. I've got stretchmarks, backaches, a mini-van and I am worried about triglycerides. Lame.

When do you cross the line from every year being excited about getting older to wanting to crawl into a rock at the idea that another year has passed by and you are creeping closer and closer to being a certain age that you distinctly remember thinking was really really old when you were younger. Thi....thir.....thirty. I can't even say it, it's disgraceful.

My mom had me when she was thirty eight and I remember feeling like I had the most ancient mother around (she will, no doubt, agree as I was quite vocal about the whole thing), but really, now I find myself arguing that thirty eight....wow, that's pretty young! You know? Definitely still in the prime of life.

Anyway. I'm getting older. I'm not who I want to be yet and all of the sudden I feel like I am running out of time. When am I going to learn to paint the walls in my house? To spend hours and hours volunteering? To go to Hawaii? And most importantly - to be someone that someone looks up to?

Well, until I can sort this all out I am going to continue wearing Teen Spirit, being the silly one at Young Women's, dancing to the HSM soundtrack and so on. And in the meantime, if you have any good ideas for a fast track to becoming someone really amazing, please let me know.

Nostalgia

It's hard to imagine that today is the one year anniversary of this little incident. To celebrate the droll and uneventful nature of Black Friday 2008 we decided to go and visit the botanical gardens at zilker park. It was the perfect day, nice cool breeze beautiful fall leaves, etc. We had an incredible time! Who knew that botanical gardens could be so fun, and so....free! We saw an herb garden, cactus garden, prehistoric garden, green garden, rose garden and best of all an Oriental garden, which was our favorite. There were lots of waterfalls and stone/bamboo bridges, and quaint little stone paths. The very best part were the ponds full of huge gold fish. I am talking HUGE goldfish. Probably there is another name that they are called, but they looked like big gold fish. And they had little stepping stones going around and through the pond that you could walk on. It was terribly fun. Especially for Gwen. Until she fell in the gold fish pond. And so the Black Friday disaster of 08 began. And really that's where it ends, but falling into a pond with fish the size of yourself is pretty traumatic for a four year old!

*Note: these are not my children. I just found this picture on the internet (it is the same area where Gwen fell in though, but unfortunately we did not take our camera, or video camera, on this excursion).

Gratitude

Of course there are many things to be thankful for today. You know all the regulars; family, food, shelter, clothing, religion, and so on. I thought you might to hear something that I was the most grateful for last night at 6:55PM. The girl working at PaPa Murphy's.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that 6:00PM on the night before Thanksgiving is not the best time to go to the grocery store. I could have gone anytime during that day. Instead I spent a lot of time trying to beat Robin's Word Twist score, and some time cleaning up, etc. Both things that could have been done in the same amount of time later in the evening. However, I made the decision to go to HEB and I had the brilliant idea to stop at Papa Murphy's for a pizza to take home for dinner.

I think I wound up parking further away from the store than it would have been if I would have just walked from my house. That presented a problem since I had to hold Bentley in one arm and hold Gwen's hand in the other. Not only did it leave no hands available to carry my reusable grocery bags (one of which is my makeshift purse ever since "the incident" which involved applesauce and an explosion in my previous diaper bag), but I was also parked so far away that there were no carts in site.

Anyway I exacerbatedly huffed and puffed my way towards the store and stopped in Papa Murphy's. The time was 6:20PM. I ordered my pizza and asked if I could just pick it up when I was done shopping; she said yes but as I was leaving out the door she hollered, "oh be sure you're back by 7:00PM because that's when we close". Awesome. I was banking on standing in line for an hour based on the sheer number of cars in the parking lot.

Amazingly enough I survived the store. I was nearly annihilated in the dessert aisle (who knew chocolate pudding was such a hot commodity for Thanksgiving!), when I had to do a u-turn in my cart....there were about fifty really angry people ready to mob me when I pulled that little number! I finally made my way back to Papa Murphy's and stewed about leaving my groceries and children (now I had a cart, a very full cart) while I went in to get my pizza. Otherwise I would have to unload the kids, and leave my precious Thanksgiving fare outside where it could get snitched.

And just as an aside, it is never a good idea, but particularly when you are pregnant, to think before you go to the store, "Oh, I don't want to go the restroom now, I bet if I have to go it will help me to be fast in the store. Surely I will make it back in time". Anyway. Yeah.

The girl who had taken my order spotted me outside and brought me my pizza. It was a small thing to do. She probably thought nothing of it. But it meant a lot to me! Seriously I was singing her praises all night long.

You should really do nice things for pregnant people or people who have lots of kids, or even just people who look like they really need to go to the bathroom and still have a six mile walk till they get to their car.

Thank you Papa Murphy's employee. You're a rockstar.

Hardy har har

Gwen: Mom, do you have a twentysixhead?

Me: A twentysixhead? Uh, I don't think so.

Gwen: Yes you do because I have a forehead, because I am four. For year old heads are called foreheads, so you have a twentysixhead.


Nice.

My name is Kristi

and I am a recovering sodapopaholic. It's been about one month since my last drink. With only three little "incidents" that I think were totally justifiable (#1- I was at a party and they had a slushy sherbety gingerale-y kind of thing and I didn't even associate that with pop until I had had a couple glasses. Whoops. #2- a few innocent sips of Gwen's sprite one night while out to dinner and #3 the day I took the dogs to the vet I stopped at Sonic and got an extra large cherry coke. Don't ask). But really coming from someone who used to stop at Happy hour at sonic about three or four times a week.... it's really kind of saying something. And I went to enrichment and they had free Dr. Pepper there. And we went to Sheyenne's house and she had ice cold Pepsi there. And, so many times I have held so strong. Go ahead. Tell me how awesome I am. Or not. Whatever, but I am a teeny bit proud of myself! Oh yeah.

P.S. I can't wait for our drive to Utah because the one "exception" to the "no pop" rule is on long car trips, as in longer than five hours. So, that will be fun ; )

Cruel and unusual

Last night Blaine and I were sitting and talking on the couch. Then out of the corner of my eye I noticed a monstrous dark mysterious thing over on the kitchen wall. I thought it was probably a killer tarantula or something. I walked over to find out it was a wasp. Seriously, aren't they all supposed to be dead by now or hibernating or just....elsewhere? (speaking of, I should do an entire post about "things that can sting" in Texas, did you know there are like seven hundred types of wasps and all of them are indigenous to Austin, TX? Seriously. Red wasps and black wasps are huge and mean and scarier than anything anyone who has lived in Utah has ever seen. Swear.)

So my valiant husband went on a wasp hunt. It took about five minutes of chasing it and swatting at it and girlish screams (I'm not saying whether they came from me or him), but finally the darn thing wound up in the sink, we turned on the water and the disposal and that was that. Except that wasn't that. Blaine felt so guilty killing it in such a ruthless way since it never did anything to us. Seriously? And then he went off on some kick about how the disposaled wasp would be waiting to torture him when he died and that made him nervous. Really nervous.

And that is when I reminded him that he sprayed pest control for a living for two years (or was it three?). And then we tried to grasp the sheer number of bees, wasps, and other creepy crawly things that would be waiting for him.

And for the first time I thought, maybe it's okay if we don't die at like the exact same second. Maybe Blaine needs like a ten minute head start. Because, ewwwwwwwwww.

What color hair does the milkman have?

Do you ever say something and then pause and then realize what you said came out totally different from what you meant.

Say you were talking to your neighbor about your sons abnormally large head. He happens to mention that he also has a large head. So you say something to the effect of, "Yeah, I should just tell the doctor....look, his sister has a big head she is fine, I have a big head and I'm fine, and the guy across the street has a big head too and he's fine. " and then you stop and think. Then you realize the implications of what you just said. And you don't know if it is better to acknowledge that the words came out horribly wrong or to just simply walk away and pretend you didn't notice what you said.

Blaine has a really big head, for what it's worth. And I am faithful and true to that big noggin.