Now and Then

Ok, so I'm feeling a little bad about my "rant". I really do love all of my kids friends and I really am happy they live by us. I know it would be different if I had good health and if the kids were a little bit older. Most of the kids that come over are four and under so it is more like running a daycare center at this point. I thought I would put some of the cute pics of the girls and their friends up just so you can all see how cute they are.

I know first hand how important and special it is to have childhood friends. After all, I still have many of mine. I think it's great that I can get together with friends I've had since the age of five and watch our kids play. I'm so lucky to still be close to so many of my friends. Lots have moved away and one is in heaven, but I still feel very lucky to have had so many friends as a child. I had a million pictures to choose from, but I thought I'd better not put everyone to sleep with my slide show so I just chose a couple.

we loved kmarts photo booth, I have a zillion of these!

Amber and me in Las Vegas 1990

part of "the gang" Sherry,Jamie,Amy,Rachel.Tami,Tiffany,Amber,Annette,my thumb 1989

Tami and me in our gawkiness 1988

Amy and me 1989

me,Annette, and Rachel in Amy's room 1988

me and Amber in our pool. 80's?

Amy and me at Crystal Springs early 80's

Annette,Rachel,Tami,me,Amber Rachel's house 2008

More Ovaltine please!

Ok, so here's my rant for today. This rant may be about me or commercials, I'm not even sure. Lets start here....
I'm not the kind of mom who relishes in having the whole neighborhood in my house at once. Does that make me bad? I just keep thinking of the commercials from when I was little. You know like the Ovaltine one where all the kids come running into the kitchen screaming "we want ovaltine". The mother very kindly smiles and immediately starts preparing the desired drink. I am so not that mother! Or the one that's on TV rightnow for Totinos pizza rolls, you know the one where the kid punches a hole through the kitchen wall because he's too lazy to walk into the next room to get them. There's no way I'd smile to myself and say "ok"! Or do y'all remember the one where the kid spills punch or something on the carpet and the mom smiles and says "that's okay"! You know she's totally down with it because she's got resolve carpet cleaner to remove the stain. I am the mother that gets frazzled every time the kids have friends over because I spend the whole time refilling drinks, refereeing fights or telling them to close the front or back door. I love that there's literally a friend for my girls in every house on our street, BUT I don't love them all in my house. Truth is I love them at someone else's house! I was going to say I don't even mind it when they're all in my yard, but that's not even true. I always end up outside helping someone get off and on the tramp three hundred times or getting drinks for every thirsty kid out there. Worst of all is when the friends come running in my house to tattle on the other friends and I end up outside telling neighbor 1 to be nice to neighbor 2. By now you're totally thinking "this woman is pure evil and shouldn't even be allowed to have children" right? I think I'm just having a hard mommy day today. It's not the first and it certainly won't be the last!
P.S. I am not endorsing or dissing on any of the above products, I'm sure they're just great.

staycation sequals, shots, and other fun things!

So where should I start? Sequal, shots or fun things. Ah, lets just mix it up a little just for fun!

Last wednesday evening I had the pleasure of spending the evening with three pretty fun ladies. This is really one of my very favorite things to do, laugh the night away with Pam, Joan and Peggy. Mom used to be part of the group, and if I know her, still is! What's so fun about being with these "older" ladies is that you actually feel younger. You can laugh like you did when you were twelve, you know the kind of laughter that makes your face hurt or your side split. Pam always has fun new games that I've never heard of. We played walk the dog and sneaks. Sneaks was actually just like playing spoons but it had fancy cards and little plastic sneakers to grab instead of spoons. Peggy and Joan had never played spoons before and it was hilarious playing until they finally got the hang of it. Sorry Peggy but here is where I make fun of you a little!! Peggy won the first round and therefore grabbed the first sneaker, she wasn't quite sure what to do next. Ok, so I guess I have to make fun of myself a little bit too. Here's what happened....Peggy grabs the first sneaker and on the ball Pam grabs the second. Joan and I are still diligently passing cards to the left because we're oblivious that shoes have been snatched. Well, Peggy seeing that Joan and I are still playing starts passing cards too. I guess she thought she'd go for another four of a kind and grab the last sneaker on the table. Pam was laughing so hard I thought she'd fall right off her chair! Well as if that wasn't funny enough, Peggy starts winning every hand. I mean every single hand played. I'm like "what's up with that, how can you win every single hand?" She proudly turns over her cards and says "see I got four greens." Well, it was a little bit dark on Pam's patio and Peggy actually had 2 green and 2 brown cards! How many hands did she have mixed colors and grab a sneaker? It was hilarious. Well the comedy ensued when Pam and Joan both proceeded to grab sneakers with mixed colored hands. What's so funny about this is last July (refer to last July's post if you wish) we played dominoes out on Pam's patio at dusk and the same thing happened. The "older" ladies kept trying to match up purple dominoes with brown, green, blue or whatever other color they liked. I'm just saying. Next year let's bring out a lamp! Anyway, that was dang fun and long overdue.

Onto the shots. Friday morning Nanny had her kindergarted dr appt. You know the one where they get FOUR shots. I made Kerry take her because I had just taken Dan Dan to get hers last week. How much trauma can a mommy go through? Right after her dr. appt we all headed up to Logan for another staycation. This one was great because the hotel pool was open and we made it to continental breakfast! That one's for you Nanny! It really was fun, we had pizza at Firehouse pizza for lunch then headed to Willow Park. I hadn't been there since the good old days of being in the Riverdale 1st ward. We used to go to Bear Lake as a ward every year when I was young. We would stop at Willow Park and eat breakfast on the way. The girls liked Willow Park a lot. I know they don't have nearly as many animals as Hogle but I liked it because it is so shady and flat there and not too big. Nanny was quite the invalid because of her shots. I only brought the single stroller (stupid me) and she and Dan fought over it the whole time. We finally decided Nanny really deserved it because her poor little legs were so sore. After the park we headed to the Bluebird cafe for some yummy chocolates. We couldn't resist sitting at the old fashioned soda bar first to share a sundae. Yummy!! The highlight of the day was swimming at the hotel pool. We had it all to ourselves! Mommy had fun showing off for the girls. I know a couple tricks from growing up with a swimming pool. Good times. There seemed to be plenty of chlorine in the pool because when we got out Kerry's swim suit was five shades lighter and Nan's swimsuit no longer had purple hearts on it. Holy cow, I'm not kidding you. Their swimsuits literally looked like they had been washed with a whole bottle of bleach!

When we told people we were going to Logan for staycation everyone, I mean everyone said we just had to eat at Cafe Sabor. Ok, ok just leave us alone. We'll try it. And we did, ya they had really good chili rellenos, which is my new love. Their chili verde which I'm also a connoisseur of was not so good. All in all, it was good but Nanny was dramatically lying across three chairs nursing her sore legs and Dan filled her diaper early in the meal and as a result could not sit down. We slept off and on through the night. I had Dan in my bed and Kerry had Nan in his. Both girls throw pretty good punches in their sleep, and they talk jibberish too. After continental breakfast we went to the Gossner cheese store and bought the girls some flavored milk. Nothing better than rootbeer milk, eh? One more stop at Willow Park and we were ready to head home. Another successful family staycation. It's quite a miracle for me to be able to do things like this so I am really grateful to be writing about it rightnow!

Joan, Pam & Peggy playing walk the dog

So long, farewell, aufweidersein, goodbye!

Today I would like to talk about the Sound of Music. Ok not really, I just wanted to get this song stuck in your heads. Did it work? Are you humming it to yourself rightnow? If you find yourself lying awake tonight at 3:00 a.m. singing this or any other sound of music song go ahead and call me at 555-0632! Alright, alright my blog actually has nothing to do with the sound of music at all. It's really about hair. How'd you like that segway( I seriously have no idea how to spell that word). After months of telling Nanny the only way to truly rid herself of gnarley snarles was to cut her hair off she finally believed me. Tuesday morning while I was trying to get a comb through the rat's nest we sometimes call her hair she blurts out " I want my hair cut off rightnow!" "Like rightnow rightnow" I said. "Yes rightnow." So we hopped in the van drove to Great Clips chopped her hair off and walked out with a totally awesome Hannah Montana poster!! Here are highlights of the adventure.

long luxurious locks the first cut

lovin every minute of it oh so proud to be here

Isn't she lovely with her new do! Sissy wanted in on the action!

Nanners loved her new hair cut and she looked so much older when she was done. Believe it or not, this was her first professional haircut. A sassy new look just perfect to start Kindergarten, way to go Nanny!

Have free agency, will travel

Any of you other mothers with young children going through this fun stage right now? You know your kids are exercising their independence and all that jazz. I'm not a big fan of my kids having minds of their own, how 50's of me I know. I just don't like fighting over things that quite frankly five and two year olds shouldn't even care about yet. Dan doesn't like the way I comb her bangs anymore and Nan, well she doesn't like the way I do ANYTHING anymore. When did I lose the power? I want it back. Do I ever get it back? I know, I know it only gets worse from here on out, I don't want comments from all of you seasoned mothers telling me "these are the easy years". Aargghh!!

Today I surrender the power of wardrobe over to my all wise, all knowing five year old. After all, what do I know after 34 years on this earth. Surely I don't know anything about color coordinating and all that, right? Hey, just because her outfit literally hurt my eyes and made me feel even dizzier doesn't mean it's not a good thing. I'm all about picking my battles and today I just wasn't up for the fight!

fun with Jordyn

Well we got our Jordy back this week. We drove to Tooele friday night and stole her from my sister. Sorry sis, I know you guys miss her. We didn't tell the girls where we were going until we were on the way, what a fun surprise that was for them!

Saturday morning Nanny's dance studio was in the Roy city parade. I decided to ride on the float with Nan opposed to walking along side the float with some other moms. That would have done me in and plus it was fun sitting next to her waving at on looking fans. Notice my Team Edward shirt!! Ya, lets not forget to mention that this was also the day Breaking Dawn came out. You know I totally sent Kerry to Sams Club first thing in the morning to buy it for me. Ok, so that aside the parade was really fun!

Today it has been lovely outside. Nice and overcast with a few raindrops. I was lovin it and so were the girls. It was the kind of day where all of the neighborhood kids were outside playing together. It was nice to have Jordy here to help, all of the kids thought she was very fun. She does fun things with them like spin them around and stuff. You know stuff moms are too tired and ornery to do (not to mention dizzy)! I got some pictures of the girls outside having fun, just thought I'd share them.

cute cousins!!!!!

Jordy giving Dan's bike a spin