Girl Time

Guess what I did today?

Bear in mind that the last time I had Girl time I spent it running over fish in the parking lot at Wallmart; Ok, that was the second to last time that I had girl time last weekend I spent the night at a hotel with two girl friends, great fun, but of course forgot the camera (Maybe when I grow up I can be my friend Heather, she always brings the camera for cute girl time pictures).

This was fun because it was that spontaneous girl time that awesome husbands give you from time to time. We had a babysitter age child home from school today, so Richard took me to lunch in Salt Lake City and then sent me to get my nails done, all 20 of them. What a sweetie. Nothing like 20 French tips and a new toe ring to make you feel all cute and girlie. Thanks Babe!

Cussin'

We invited my Mom and Sister Jenny over for dinner the other night. We were all sitting around the table enjoying our hamburgers and hot dogs hot off the grill when Jacob told his younger Brother to shut the hell up, for the most part Shit, Damn, Hell and Ass, are ignored around our house we save our battles against bad words for the big ones; but, because Grandma was there Richard and I both got on his case and I told him to apologize to Grandma. Jacob was outraged, his teenage defense system went in to high alert at the hypocrisy of ignoring bad words unless someone like Grandma is around.

I, figuring it's my parental duty to teach him to watch his language around women, children, grandparents and clergy, tell him again to apologize to his Grandma. He ducks his head and offers his best attempt at a sincere teenager apology, "Sorry Grandma".
To which Grandma in all her silver haired wisdom replies, "What the hell for".

There you have it if my children cuss like sailors it's their Grandma's fault.

Blogging

I installed a counter on my blog. I share this little tidbit, not in case you missed it but, because I am so freakin' proud of myself for figuring out how to install it with only one phone call to my brother in law Rob via Amy, to find out my IP address. I just knew this blog would help me become less of a computer idiot. Thanks to all of you who stop by and visit an extra huge thanks to all who leave comments.

I love the self-discovery process this blogging thing has become; my sister Jenny who lives across the street and is, thus, here quite often, tells me I appear very Zen like and unflappable on my blog...she wants to assure you, that is not always or even often the case. I have noticed, however, that I am more aware of the joyful, funny aspects of my families day-to-day adventures and I find it easier to focus on the fun rather then the irritations as I view my life from the point of view of my blog readers.

I wonder if I viewed God as the reader of every blog entry I write by my daily reactions to life, my children and my spouse, would I get as frustrated, would I judge myself as harshly, would I turn on my children or spouse with anger and irritation or would I look towards heaven and laugh asking the great Father of us all, help me see the humor and growth in this event so that you'll love reading it and I can be glad you do.

I have come to know myself so much better over the past few months, I am Zen like and unflappable on the outside most of the time; it's on the inside that I struggle. Today as I attempted to do yoga the instructor cautioned us, in her most Zen like voice, not to be hard on ourselves because we couldn't do certain poses, "Be nice to yourself then you can be nice to others" she said. I am so hard on myself...I tell myself how fat I am and how unorganized my life is, how if I just had a little discipline I wouldn't let myself down all the time I even hold a nasty secret belief that there are women who's laundry is actually done. I hold up an ideal which is a combination of my perception of the very best strengths of everyone I know and then I beat myself up because I am less then that Ideal. Reading your blogs helps me know I am normal and that I am wonderful because I don't have perfect discipline and I'm not the perfect size and my life is chaotic yet I still manage to live and love and serve and bless others. Your blogs let me know that you are struggling with the same things and that we really are all here to learn from experience and that God judges none of us.

Enough of that, I am just learning to love me which, according to the yoga instructor on channel 11, will help me love you and you are wonderful :) you deserve to be loved.

Eat Your Hearts Out Ladies

What woman doesn't dream of spending her day surrounded by handsome, adoring men? Ellen DeGeneres you say? well you've got me there. OK, so for the many women in this world who would love to spend their days being loved on by eight wonderful, albeit short(some of them) men; welcome to my life. Click on the picture to read Adams shirt.









This morning Adam climbs up to stand on the bar, "Mom I'm tall" he proudly tells me.
"Yes you are" I reply.
"Mom, I'm smart" he declares.
"Thats for sure" I nod.
"Mom, I'm naked" He yells.
"Tall, Smart and Naked, you're the man of my dreams".
"Mom, come closer and I can catch you" as he prepares to jump to me.

Eat you heart out ladies he's tall, smart and naked and he's all mine. Until he discovers real girls that is.

A while later Joseph walks in with a pair of son glasses on top of his head and asks,
"Mom, how do I look?"
"Like a handsome cool movie star!" I answer.
"Yep!" he says.

Thats my Joseph, strong, handsome, silent type. I'm a lucky women.

Sleddin' Baby!

Grandma and Grandpa Smith invited us all to come sledding at Jolleys' Ranch up Hobble Creek Canyon today. Grandma brought awesome chili and Grandpa brought a can of WD40 because... umm, thirteen kids and seven adults on a sledding hill can never have enough speed?

We had a blast, Benjamin, Amanda and Hayden were about 6 feet from the top of the very steep hill behind us before we yelled at them to come down. Benjamin was really bummed about not making it to the top, he'd rather climb then sled.

Once Isaac figured out how fun it was he never stopped even for food. Josh and Miah were kings of the hill, Josh got in trouble for trying to go up and over the embankment at the bottom. Jacob was the official push off guy. Joseph and Adam were fearless snow warriors and by the end of the trip Adam had all the little girls on the hill carrying him and his sled back to the top, charming little devil.

Susan had fun taking pictures and took a couple of runs down the hill. Richard took a couple turns on the sled can't get shown up by the teenagers.

After an hour on the hill we gathered at the pavilion, ate chili and drank hot chocolate, oh, next time you make a mug of hot cocoa try dropping a handful of butter mints in it, very Good!

Baby Dorothy was the cutest part of the day. She was completely covered by a pink snow suit except for her chubby little cheeks and gorgeous face. (Of course I didn't get a picture)

We missed Jamey she was doing laundry...come on girlfriend, snow melts and laundry is never done, never, never done! Brian brought the fastest coolest sleds so we were glad he was there.
Grandma and Cori Ann hung out by the fire and Emmy and Amanda hung out in the truck, smart women, dry and warm.

Fun times!

Following Instructions

This morning Joseph came in to my bedroom where I lay in bed not willing to face the day quite yet. He asked me to get him some milk, I sighed and said, "Sure buddy, will you get me my bath robe?"
"What's a funeral?" he asks.
"My BATHROBE!" I enunciate.
"Your blue rope?" he questions, with a confused look.
"Joseph, you know, my blue thing I wear, that is in the bathroom, that has a string to tie around my waist."
His Face lights up, "Oh I know he says" he runs to the bathroom.
A couple minutes later he returns with an embarrassed, proud, slightly freaked out look on his face. He stands in front of me for a second then holds up his fist and opens his hand to offer me a tampon. "Is this what you want Mom?" He asks?
Well, it was in the bathroom, it is mine, and it does have a blue string. I was proud of myself!
I didn't start laughing until I had got my robe, put it on, poured his milk and sent him in to watch Nick Jr.
Poor little guy.

Mistakes

One of my favorite blogs is listed as HollywoodFlakes on my Blogs I Love list. Hollywood is a skilled writer who writes amusing and thought provoking(albeit, often silly thoughts)
essays about life and experiences. Today Hollywood invited her readers to share in the misery she has experienced as she tried to complete a writing assignment on her 'worst mistake'.

After reading 44 anonymous comments some funny and silly but many filled with terrible pain I left my comment. Richard asked me to include it on my blog today.

My biggest mistake ever!!! Is that I let GUILT cloud the memories of the life experiences that are teaching me who I am.

God gives us repentance so we can live our lives learning from the experiences which we, in our self-judgmental, guilt ridden pain, call mistakes.

Regret is a tool for realizing that our actions and choices, in any given experience, may not have represented who we are. All these experiences we call life, are teaching us what we are, or what we are not. If we waste our lives feeling guilty over the experiences that taught us what we are not, then we miss out on fully living the experiences that teach us who we are.

Love yourself enough to stop doing what you are not and start being who you are.

Go find that lost love and get your closure; or accept that you will always love that individual and that that love adds to, not detracts from, your current relationship.

Quit that meaningless job that doesn't provide for you and makes you miserable, go do what you love. College and degrees are meaningless, experience and love qualify you to be what you are passionate about, go be it.

Let go of the pain, it is not you. You are a creation of God, he is not punishing any of us, he is a loving forgiving father, His only pain is how cruelly we punish ourselves.

Why do we let the past destroy the present and predict our future?

Every religion offers as it's highest reward a paradise in the presence of God free from pain, worry, guilt, and regret. Ironic that all of those feelings are experienced in the present but come from the past or are from our prediction's of the future based on the past.

Each moment fully experienced is paradise!

Fully experiencing each moment is the presence of God. It's not a location it's a way of life.

I love me, I am my greatest success.

Guilt Sucks, and never the right things.

Joseph and Adam Sing

I Am trying to figure out how to get Videos right side up.



Tiffany help! How do I get this my videos right side up?

Isaac

Isaac has been saying some funny things lately, thought I'd share a few. My unspoken answers are in green.

The night before Valentines Day, I'm buying a half-dozen roses so Jacob can take flowers to a few of his girl friends at school. Isaac asks me, "Mom, who are those flowers for? Are you buying those flowers for Dad to give you for Valentines Day."
Hmmm, that's not a bad idea Isaac.

At the grocery store one night I ran into a young girl from our ward whom I haven't seen for a while. I notice she is pregnant, congratulate her and ask her how she's feeling, she says, "Good other then I have Bronchitis". Isaac, who has been listening in, interrupts the conversation and asks, "Mom, What's frogchitis?"
That's when you mistake kissing frogs for doing... other things with frogs and end up with two children before you're eighteen. (sigh)

One morning I was taking Isaac to school when he says, "Mom, I don't want to go to school today because they're just going to read boring books to us".
"Isaac you love when I read you books"
"I know Mom, but they are going to just have some random person read us some random book and it's just going to be so boring".
Random, thought, I have to put up with your random excuses to stay home from random school, every random day, so if on a random day some random person is boring you with a random book I don't random care.

A couple months ago a neighbor boy, with some challenges, was over visiting me. He was complaining that he is always bored at home, I suggested that he read some books. He told me he can't get interested in reading. Isaac pipes up and says, "Tyler, you have to be interested in things or you'll always be bored, if you read lots of different books you'll find out the things you're interested in and then you'll never be bored".

Wow, Isaac thats incredible advice for a 6 year old, I guess all that random book reading at school is turning out OK after all.

Valentines

It's the thirteenth of February at 8:00PM and I find myself at the grocery store, standing in front of the motley assortment of I waited to damn long to buy my kids cool Valentines cards. Now I'm left with the daunting task of trying to convince the little dears that Dora and Diego are cool cards for fifth and sixth graders to hand out and that a first grader doesn't have to give his teachers a dozen roses. All the cool candy is gone we either get to dump red hot hearts into an envelope or those nasty conversation hearts, "Oh look boys, Nestle decided to experiment with the Crunch bar and came up with a crispy, crunchy, cookie edition covered in dark chocolate, I bet your friends will love these". The Fifth and sixth grader stare at me like I just crawled out from under a lime green 1967 VW Bus, dressed in a tie dyed tank top and bell bottom polyester pants with a peace sign bandanna tied around my afro, the first grader starts to cry.

We fight our way through the crowd of procrastinator parents and wander over to the non-holiday candy aisle. The first grader won't stop whining, I contemplate beating him into a coma with his box of John Deere Valentines...yes, Americas favorite farm equipment company has become valentines and, if you wait until February 13th at 8:00 PM, you too can be the proud owner of a box. We settled on caramel apple suckers, I know, they seem like a Halloween treat but First Graders Valentines box is orange and he used a black marker to draw first grade hearts on it which looked a lot like ugly pumpkins, plus it stopped the whining for a minute.

The non-holiday candy aisle is right across from the beer aisle and there, amongst the desperate Valentine shoppers, were two poor guys who looked like they had stepped out of an episode of
LA Ink, These guys were six foot four, they had piercings, leather boots, tattoos, just the 'Real Bad Boys' to make all my rebel Valentines fantasies come true, and me with out my longed for tattoo surrounded by stressed out kids and guilty parents. Next year I'm buying Valentines when they come out on December 23rd.

Adam Sings

Adam runs around singing I am a child of God constantly, despite the fact that half the time he acts... well, lets, just say that it's a good thing he has parents who are kind and dear. On the positive side I am felling much better and now will attempt to clean the huge mess that my house has become because I dared to get sick and let it go for three days. Lets face it, Moms don't get sick days. Ok I am to stupid to get the video right side up.

Just Say No!

I apologize for this entry before I even get started. I spent the night coughing, I am on massive amounts of cold medications and my mind is fuzzy. That reminds me of the talk on the Holy Ghost at our ward baptism on Saturday. The two boys who had just been baptized had been given blankets to symbolize the Holy Ghost the speaker told them the Holy Ghost would make them, think the right way about things. Then she told them to feel their blankets, "Don't they feel warm and comforting?" she asked.
I thought, "Yeah, I wish I had a warm blanket, I'm freezing."
"Aren't they fuzzy?" she asked.
"So that explains all my fuzzy thoughts" mused I, "It's the Holy Ghost."

Note to self: Do not take cold medication before going to baptisms.

Another note to self: don't take pictures of yourself when sick and drugged, you might show them to someone.

We finally got Joseph batteries for the Leap Frog learning system Grandma bought him for Christmas. He played with it for a few minuets then said, "Mom, my lap top is freakin' hilarious." Too cute!

Speaking of Joseph, today I kept looking at him thinking his hair looked really weird. I wondered if he had slept on it funny. Then I wet my fingers and smoothed it down...still weird, there was this one long piece that looked like bangs but all the other bangs were gone. Finally after realizing that I wasn't just delirious I asked him if he cut his hair. "Yes," he said, "I did it when Tyler was here." (Tyler is his cousin who is Ben's age, he had a sleep over from Thursday to Friday) Not really sure if Tyler had anything to do with it or he was just a reference for a point in time. Grandma, help!

But, that brings me to another random thought that keeps going through my head. Have any of you got a hair cut and ended up with Dumb and Dumber Bangs? (that's bangs cut really blunt, straight across your forehead, about half an inch above your eyebrows, like Jim Carrey's hair in the movie dumb and Dumber) I have a paranoia about getting Dumb and Dumber bangs so I always caution the girl who does my hair
not to go too short. This last hair cut she didn't cut my hair because I was happy with it but she did cut my bangs. They are not to short but I keep thinking something is wrong with them, so I took a picture. (my camera actually has a setting for holding the camera up and taking a picture of yourself LOL) So tell me dear readers, all 8 or 9 of you. Do my bangs look weird to you or is it just me?
I think Joseph has come up with a hair style to solve both of our hair issues, we could call it diaper wipe hair.















Yesterday we had a really great Fast and Testimony meeting. We laughed and cried, lot's of kids got up and bore beautiful or funny testimonies, a man in our ward who is deaf bore his testimony about how hard it is for him to participate in church because he is afraid people won't be able to understand him. Two of my boys and my Mom bore neat testimonies. One of the brothers wore his Kilt and bore his testimony in honor of President Hinkley. To make it even better Richard had stayed home with the three little ones who had colds, so I got to enjoy the meeting sitting peacefully cuddled up with my big boys. When we got home I told Richard that I thought it was the best Fast and Testimony Meeting that we had ever had in the ward, I asked Jacob if he agreed he said, he couldn't say because he hadn't been in the ward that long. ???
"Jacob, we've been in the ward seven years," I said.
"Well the ward was split not that long ago," he replied.
"Um, Jacob, that was five years ago," says I.
"Mom, it's not like I started listening and paying attention until, like a year ago." Well, at least he's honest.
So there you have it; I thought it was the best Fast and Testimony Meeting ever, but take into account that I was heavily drugged, @@ (I like these they look like little drugged eyes) Jacob hasn't been paying attention long enough to make an informed decision.
I think we've got to be really high on the list for Mormon Family of the year.

I have decided to go on the Adam diet. This includes playing with all your food during meal time but not actually eating it. The only foods you actually put in your mouth are a gallon and a half of milk a day and fruit-by-the-foot which you eat by shoving the whole thing in your mouth causing you to gag until you throw-up. Then for exercise you whack a brother older and bigger then you, call him an idiot or something worse and run. You repeat this exercise endlessly through out the day, causing those around you to get their exercise by chasing you thus helping the whole family stay in shape. Don't let the pictures fool you he's noooot! eating (notice how much is on his pants and on his plate) he's just playing. Yes, its the Adam diet for me...Oh, wait! He's gaining weight constantly despite not eating, never mind I'm doing that pretty well all by myself. OK, OK, so I'm eating everything in sight. Is it, "Starve a cold, feed a fever" or, feed a cold, feed a fever, feed your cough, feed your sniffles, feed your fuzzy thoughts?

Well time to go, I just realized that I now have cold symptoms and diarrhea, don't ask.

Email From Suzie

This is an email I got from my friend Suzie, since it is the story of my life and I'm sure most of yours, I thought I'd put it on my blog today then use the time to accomplish something useful. The time that I would have spent thinking of and writing some random event you all might find amusing as you're escaping your to do list by reading my blog.


Susan,

How the heck are you? Sorry, I didn't call yesterday. I had a huge list of things to do. I have to make a list because if I don't, I just wander from room to room doing a little bit here and there. I'll be cleaning and go into the next room and get side tracked. It seems like I never get anything done. Well I got lots done today. I made a LONG LIST, as I wandered from room to room not accomplishing a damn thing I'd stop by the kitchen and add yet another task to my list. So, there you have it, today I made a list. I actually crossed a few things off. One task was laundry, I crossed it off! Who am I kidding, laundry is never done.

I also crossed off exercise. Good thing I exercised. I'm beginning to think that I'll never get past the plateau I'm at. I have even gone as far as to think maybe I'm putting on pounds from the "shea body butter". It smells good enough to eat. That would really suck if our bodies took on calories from lotion. Well, I'm sure that it wasn't the body butter, it's most likely the chocolate chips I munch on before going to bed, the two pieces of warm bread lathered with butter ( not shea butter) that my visiting teacher brought by, and the spoonful's of cookie dough that I ate, the large cup of cocoa with three huge spoonfuls of hazelnut coffee mate in it. Great now I have to add exercise back to my list for tomorrow.

I 'll have to add " call Susan to the list", that would be an easy task. I'm sure I'll wander past the phone sometime tomorrow. You see, I originally sat down at the computer to order Jason some DVD's for Valentines Day.

Love, Suz

I love friends, they make you laugh, they cry with you and mostly help you remember that you are normal and beautiful and awesome because they are.