Christmas Card Attempts

I thought I would share with all of you my attempts at getting just one good picture of my kids for the family Christmas Card this year.

You might notice a recurring theme in all of them.

(Hint: It's the two year old.)

Why do I even try?

Santa Run 2008

Have you ever wondered what a bunch people dressed as Santa would look like running up and down the "Vard" in downtown Ogden (aka Washington BLVD for all you non-'vard-dragging people)?

( Hint: I'm the one in red.) ;)

( That's me! #1542 and Jen #1601.)
(P.S. Don't you just love Jen's socks!)

This weekend I had the opportunity to run a 5K in Ogden where everyone who ran had to dress up as Santa. And may I say that I had a blast?! It was so fun to see how everyone looked and how they had dressed. Aside from my red top and red sweats, I (everyone) had a Santa hat, and a beard (yes, it itched.) Earlier that day I made a little green backpack to fill with candy and throw out to the little kids along the route. I also pinned in a couple of cute little stuffed reindeer in the bag so that it looked like they were getting a free ride. (Get it? Santa pulling them instead of the opposite? Ingenious, I know..) Mom bought me some big jingle bells and I sewed them onto a sash that I hung over my shoulder, and my friend Jen, who ran with me, bought me some red flashing Christmas light earrings. Don't forget the festive green i-pod strapped on my arm, and the outfit was complete.


I have run a handful of 5K in my running career, but I have to say that this one was the most fun that I have ever done. I couldn't stop smiling the whole time (even though that flipping beard kept flipping up in my face). I ran with my two friends Jen and Jen, and we had a blast running along, throwing out candy, and waving to all the people along the route.

The highlights for me:

*walking through Home Depot with both Jens in the Santa gear before the run and counting the comments that were thrown our way, both verbal and non-verbal.
*winning a new pair of socks after the run for being one of the "most festive Santas."
*seeing my kids and Mike, Mom and Dad, and Liseanne and Jeff and their kiddies there cheering me on and begging me to throw some candy at them. (Mom's handing out free candy!!!)
*watching Cam roll his eyes at me when I ran by. (Did I really look THAT ridiculous?)
*seeing my reflection in the windows as we ran by and realizing that, yes, I did.

It has all the makings for a great Master Card commercial, don't you think?
*Cost of registration for the Santa run: $35
*Red running clothes to turn into a Santa suit: $18
*Seeing my two year old roll his eyes at me when he saw me: priceless.

I can't say enough what a fun run this was. So for any of you who run, or are thinking about running, (I can name names if needed...) I extend a festive invitation to come and run next year! It is definitely going to be a tradition! The more the merrier!!!

"Be glad. Be good. Be brave."
~Eleanor Hodgman Porter

My Thankful Post (Everybody's Doing It....)

It's that time of year again where I have been reflecting upon those things for which I am most grateful. There are many things on my list, everything from family to comfortable bras, to Mike and Edward. (Notice I put them in the right order thus ensuring my #1 wife ranking.) But there is one thing in particular that I am very thankful for at this time. It's my camera. Yup. My camera.

A couple of years ago Mike bought me a nice, new camera for Mother's Day. I was so excited about finally having a decent camera that it actually brought tears to my eyes. It was a few short months later (6 to be exact) that I placed my camera on my counter in the kitchen while having a birthday party with a real, live Cinderella in my home. Unfortunately for me, I placed the camera right next to the outlet where I had just plugged in the nice new fragrant Wall Flower from Bath and Body so that my home would smell good for real, live Cinderella and everyone else. What I was not aware of, however, was that in one of my RARE blond moments (I used to have a lot of them in my high school days...) I had plugged in the Wall Flower upside-down, and the lovely, fragrant oil leaked all over my counter top. The good news: My home smelled GREAT and Cinderella was most pleased. The bad: My camera was sitting right in the middle of the puddle of oil when I found it. The good news: my camera smelled GREAT! The bad: the oil actually seeped up inside of my great smelling camera and corroded the insides. Not so good for cameras.

Long story short: A couple of months ago we welcomed another camera into our home. It has been so fun, once again, to take pictures of my kids and other things.

Both of my sisters are perfect examples of this. They always seem to have their camera ready when precious moments happen. Moments like this, for example:

This is 3 year old Chester. Just a few days ago in a classic "Chester moment" he peed outside on the sidewalk, and then dumped a little bit of Gatorade on it in an attempt to clean it up. He then decided that since the Gatorade wasn't really doing the job, he would take more drastic measures.

(Warning: graphic photograph incoming...Only scroll down if you have a strong stomach)

Yes, sweet Chester decided to slurp it up instead. (Don't say I didn't warn you about this picture). Luckily for my sister, she had her camera ready to snap this picture, while I was there trying to keep my lunch down. Slurp... You can just hear it in your head, can't you.

So this is why I am thankful for cameras. They are able to preserve forever little flashes in time that you want to remember forever or might forget otherwise. It is a concrete statement. Proof. Here are a few of those moments for me:

(It's okay... I'm done with the graphic photos. I promise.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you: to all of my dear friends, my beloved family members, and any creepy unknown blog stalkers who might be out there viewing!

SLURP!!!

Predictive Text Predicament

I am going to start out by saying that I love text messaging. It is such a convenient way to communicate with people without really having to carry on a conversation. You can get someone a message by pushing a few buttons to type out a message, and then push "send" and your message is safely on it's way to the person of your choice.

It was last October while sitting at the Pumpkin Walk (please see post below) that my brothers, Brian and Sheldon, and my sister Liseanne and I, were trying to explain what a text message was to my 87 year old Grandma. She just couldn't fathom what we were talking about. So Brian handed her his phone, which was set on vibrate, and I sent him (her) a text message. She was in the middle of saying, "So how will I know when it..." when the phone vibrated in her hand and she about jumped right out of that camping chair she was sitting in. (Which says a lot, since it was next to impossible to get her out of those once she was sitting in one.) She was simply amazed at the technology (Napoleon's brother Kip would be proud.) Ah...such sweet memories of Grandma.

But as much as I love text messaging, I have to admit that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it when it comes to predictive text. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (I envy-no, covet- your QWERTY keyboards), it is when you are texting out a message (never while driving though, right?) and your phone, being the high-tech, super amazing piece of technology that it is, "guesses" the word that it thinks you want to say, and inserts it for you. It sounds all fine and dandy, doesn't it; one of those things that looks good on paper. But I find it on the "less effective" side of the communication scale when I'm trying to type something like "We are in need of more toilet paper," and it comes out as, "We ape go need me nose toilet rapes." It just seems to lose something in the translation, wouldn't you agree? And there's nothing quite like telling someone they made beautiful "bus abler" when you meant to say "cup cakes."

My all time peeve: Good=home=gone. It's all the same to the phone and it gets them mixed up repeatedly. There are quite a few little ones that drive me crazy as well: of=me, on=no, in=go, ice=had. And here is a good one. I texted out the word "bummer," and it inserted the word "atoned." Not quite the same meaning.

Sometimes predictive text can get you into a heap of trouble without even knowing if you don't proof read everything before you hit the "send" button. I learned this lesson the hard way.

I received a text from one of my friends who knew I had been sewing a very large king size quilt for another friend of mine. He texted me and asked me how the quilt was coming along. So I replied and said something along the lines of, "It's almost done! I just have to sew on the binding!" But thanks to my predictive text that obviously knew what I was REALLY trying to say, it sent, "It's almost done! I just have to sex on the binding!" After sending this text his intrest in my quilt shot up by 97% and he suddenly desired a quilt for himself.

Another example of Texts-Behaving-Badly...

Mike and I were on a bike ride in the early morning when we saw one of our friends in her driveway, so we stopped and said hello. We had our bike helmets on (being such good examples to our children) and our friend ( who shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons) started teasing Mike about how good he looked in his bike helmet, riding gloves, and sunglasses. We all laughed about it and went about our day, but apparently our friend started to worry that maybe Mike got the wrong impression, and she didn't want him to think that she had a crush on him or anything of the sort, heaven forbid! So in an attempt to straighten things out and make them better, she grabbed her phone and started texting. Here is what she wanted to say:

"Mike, I hope you know that I was in jest when I was teasing you the other day."

But this friend, like me, has predictive text that obviously knew what she REALLY wanted to say. The text read:

"Mike, I hope you know that I was in heat when I was teasing you the other day."

Ah... how I love it. It still makes me laugh.

Did Mike ever get the text? Sadly, no. Which actually bums (atones) me out a bit. Luckily for her, she proof read her message before she hit "send." But being the great sport that she is, she shared it with us anyway and let us all have a great laugh about it. Thank you, (insert friend's name), for letting us laugh with you. You just never know when those predictive texts are going to put you in heat.


"Yes, I love technology. But not as much as you, you see. But still, I love technology. Always and forever." ~Kip Dynamite

Pumpkin Walk 2008

(Please sing the following song that I just now made up to the Dora tune of "We Did It!")
(I know you all know it...)

We did it! We did it! We did it!
YEA! Lo Hicimos!
We did it!
We picked 1000 pumpkins and somehow carved them all.
We did it! We did it! We did it! Yea!
We put them all on planks and set them up in the park.
Yeah, we did it! We did it! We did it!
11,000 people came along the way
Our backs got really sore.
What a BEAUTIFUL day!
Yea! Woo hoo! Yippe!
We did it!

The song says it all, or most of it anyway. The song wasn't long enough to add in a verse about all the pumpkin guts that were all over our clothes for two weeks straight, or all the pumpkin seeds sitting in the fridge waiting to be roasted, or all the meetings and coordinating, all the time away from our families, all the groups who came in and help carve, all the lifting and moving, all the hundreds and hundreds of pounds of pumpkin guts to be disposed of, all the sore lower backs (I officially call my lower back muscle my "pumpkin muscle" now since it always hurts in October). It's no wonder it's such a relief when it is all over and done with, and yet, like a good work out, it is such a feeling of accomplishment. One year I may actually take a picture of all of my committee members, but for now these two are a couple of my favorites. =) (My mom and sister) (I love my brothers that help too, but they are not as photogenic.)


Here are some highlights: Sit back, grab a bowl of popcorn (or pumpkin seeds), and enjoy!

Here's the line to get in. Not quite the 3 1/2 hour wait that was announced in Relief Society (*sigh*), but still lengthy. Thursday averaged 40 minutes, Friday was an 1.5-2 hours, and Saturday was 45 minutes to an hour. The line always stresses me out.
I hate to have people waiting that long.
Cold, tired, and living off of caffeine.
This picture was taken well after midnight on Saturday night.

The two who started it all in their backyard: Grandma and Grandpa. This was the fist year without Grandma (she passed away in February). I miss her most at this time of year. Thank you both for leaving us such a legacy to carry on.

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
~Henry David Thoreau