Heart attacks, singing chipmunks and refined Englishmen

I hope you all had a good President's Day weekend. Thanks for your kind words after my last post, but I felt bad. I didn't mean for it to sound pitty-pottish, and I'm sorry if it did. I just feel like I've rounded a corner and wanted to share my new perspective.

We've had a fun weekend. Saturday found us cheering on my beautiful niece Abby at her soccer game, then we went bowling. Greg barely squeeked out a win, and that was after heckling me for being in the lead the entire game. That's never happened before; I am the world's worst bowler. Maybe it's because I was competing against children??? Then that night I was up until 2 am doing this to the kids' doors:

It was so much fun to see their reactions. I wrote inside jokes and nicknames on them, and had the kids write love notes to each other on the blank ones the next day. Valentine's Day was pretty low-key, since it was a Sunday. The kids ate way too much chocolate and complained about being bored after church, so it was a pretty typical day here. :)

Today found us having a picnic and playing at the park with our fun neighbors the May's. After that I took Trent, Elise and Seth to see the Chipmunk's 'sqeakquel'. It was my turn to take the kids to the movies, and I was dreading having to spend 90 minutes watching it. But I was happily surprised. I actually liked it a lot more than the first one. I'm not a huge fan of Jason Lee, and he wasn't in this one very much; so that was an improvement.

Have any of you been watching Masterpiece Classic on PBS? Some of you know that I am a Jane Austen nerd. I love all of her work, and have reread each book at least twice. The BBC has done a new version of "Emma", and I think it's the best one I've seen. I could go on and on about movie versions of the books, which ones are good, which ones got certain characters right, etc. but then you'd all know what a true geek I really am. You can watch 'Emma' online until March 9th; so plug in the headphones, snuggle up with a blanket and enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/emma/index.html

Life is good, even when it sucks

I know that's an oxymoron, but I've had an epiphany the last few days. I've been MIA the last month, and it's because I couldn't see that life was still good. I've been isolating myself, which is soooo not what I need to do when I'm down. I was only seeing the negative in my life; and I know that was making Satan happy. Even when I knew that in my heart, I couldn't pull myself up.
Then last week I read Rachel's post 'truth'
http://rachelandcompany.blogspot.com/2010/01/truth.html. As always, she is filled with insight and wisdom, and I knew God was speaking to my heart through her eloquent words. After I stopped crying, things started to become clear again.

My life is not perfect. It's not meant to be. It's never going to be. Kids are going to yell, the house is going to be a mess, money is going to be an issue. I need to learn to deal with these things and not let my entire perspective be skewed by the bad things. I have so many good things in my life. I have a husband that loves me, children whom I love so much it hurts. Extended family that cares about me, as well as friends that do too, even if it does seem like I've disappeared. I live in a beautiful home, we have food, clothes, and more toys than could ever be played with. I live in the greatest country on earth, my children are receiving an eduction, we have medicine when we're sick. But most importantly, I know that God loves me.

So even when it sucks, life is still good.

I am officially loosing my mind

How was your Christmas? Did you eat too much and spend way too much time in the kitchen? Do you think Back to School is a beautiful term? Are you ready for a long awaited break yourself? If you answered yes to any of the above, you are not alone. School doesn't start until tomorrow, but you can bet I'll be doing a Happy-Dance once they are out the door. Not that I don't love them and enjoy their laughter. It's just that over the last week, namely since Christmas has been done, they've been fighting a lot. "Santa's watching you" isn't working anymore for some reason. If I hear one more whiny, "Mom! She's looking at me!", I think I will throw a fit myself.

Enough negativity. It's a new year and with it comes new goals and trying not to feel bad about the ones you might not have accomplished last year. I try not to dwell on those, because then I become Ticked-Off Mommy, and the kids don't like her very much. I don't either, for that matter. So I like to focus on what I'm going to do right this year, and for once, I don't have a list a mile long. I've decided to focus on two areas and that's all. The rest can be worked on if I have the time or energy. And frankly, I kind-of doubt I will have either, so then I won't feel guilty for even more things. Does that make sense? I haven't had much adult interaction over the last few weeks, so forgive me if it doesn't.

We had a great Christmas, by the way. I would post pictures, but I can't find the camera and am frankly feeling too tired to go look for it right now. I'll post more later, as well as my Top 10 (or close to it) things I learned, discovered, etc. in 2009.

December is flying by

We've been keeping busy, as I'm sure all of you are, too. We've baked a ton of cookies, gone to fun parties and loved getting Christmas cards in the mail. We've shopped and danced to our favorite holiday tunes in a kitchen that can actually fit us all!
Trent started basketball and he's on the Bull's. They've had a rough start to the season, but we're hoping it gets better after the break.

He's in the blue shorts.

Elise turned 7 on the ninth, and unfortunately came home from school early not feeling so well. Here's how we started the day, with her opening presents:

Here's how we ended the day, with her cake:

I took her to the doctor the next day and she had strep throat. She was miserable, and I was so happy the antibiotics started working right away. I am always so thankful for modern medicine when my kids are sick. I don't know how those pioneer women did it.
Here we are baking gingerbread men on Sunday. I've tried lots of new recipes this Christmas, some winners and some 'thanks, but don't make those again, mom.' I think we'll pass on these next year, but the kids had a great time. Rachel just thought it was playdough. Hailey was at a youth activity, so she missed all the fun.

I'm excited for my brother Kristopher to come down on Thursday and spend Christmas with us. It will just be us this year, which is a little weird, but it'll be good. To say the kids are looking forward to Christmas morning is a huge understatement, and I can't wait to see their faces that morning.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and I hope you enjoy your holiday, like I know I will mine.

And here's a little extra I had to throw in. Rachel has been coming up with the best fashion statements lately, and here is what she treated us to tonight:

Halloween '09

Hailey looked at me in shock when I said I hadn't posted our Halloween pictures, so I'm being a good mom and getting them up, finally.

Greg and I were invited to an awesome couples party and we had to come as a famous TV or movie couple. We had a blast that night!

Group shot before they all took off.

Our UPS Driver. Can you see who the package is going to?

The best Transformer money can buy, Bumblebee.

Our pretty ballerina.

Cuter than Christian Bale.

Pablo the Backyardigan. She was supposed to be Cinderella but freaked out when I put the dress on her. Luckily Elise suggested Seth's old costume, and she was very happy. She loves the Backyardigans! Her favorite phrase is now, "I go trick or treat with Daddy! I Pablo! I like candy!", said in the cutest voice you've ever heard.

It was a Beautiful Day

I haven't posted in a month, and I'm sorry, Mom! Life has been insane and there is a lot I need to record, so I'll just get to it.
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October 23rd will now be known as U2 Day in our home. That is the day Greg and I went to see them in Vegas and there will never be another concert to top it. Our friends Ken and Katie Craig live in Vegas, so after meeting up with them, we headed to Sam Boyd Stadium. Our new best friend Jason had been waiting in line for all of us since noon. We had general admission tickets, so when the gates finally opened at 6 pm, it was mayhem, everyone running across the field, trying to get the best positions. This is the set up of the stage. Click on it to appreciate how massive it was.

Well, we ended up in the inner circle, about ten rows of people in front of us, and three behind us. On the picture above, see the person on the left side of the screen, inside the circle? We were a little bit closer than that. Perfect!

This is Ken. He and Greg have been friends since their freshman year at BYU. They had seen U2 in Vegas in '92, fresh off their missions; they had a lot of fun rehashing that night and complaining about how old they've gotten.

The Black Eyed Peas opened the show, and they were good. Not really my kind of music, but compared to most opening acts, they didn't suck. That Fergie can sing, even when she is singing about blankets.

The lights went out and the spectacle began. We were treated to songs from their new album, as well as classics. They played for 2 hours and they were amazing. There were two bridges that rotated, allowing the band to reach the outer circle. When the bridge stopped, where were we?

Yes, that is Bono. (It's not the best recording, but you can see how close we were.) The Edge also played a solo on 'End of the World', right above us. We could see the bracelets on his arms, the insane way his hands moved as he played. When we turned around to face the outer circle, you felt like you could reach out and touch them. Larry played bongo drums around the circle and it was great to see him out from behind the drums. Bono's commentary was great and they even incorporated bits of Coldplay and The Killers songs into theirs, as both Chris Martin and Brandon Flowers were there that night. Bono also pulled up a teenager from the audience, running around the circle with him and giving him his sunglasses afterwards. Talk about a memory that kid will have forever! By the end of the night I had no voice, and we couldn't hear properly for three days afterwards.

There are not enough adjectives to describe this show.Two nights afterwards they had their live YouTube show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. It was the same show we saw. If you didn't see it, here is a link to the highlights of that show. (Though they left off some of my fav live ones; Mysterious Ways and Elevation, to name a few.) But it gives you an idea of the scope of it.

http://www.u2.com/news/title/rrrtest#

This pretty much sums it up.

Translation: "I'm so happy!"

Misc.

*I love the way Rachel throws her arms around my neck to give me a hug. It is so full of love, and she squeals when she does it. Sometimes it's like she's taken all the energy she has and throws it out at once, and I'm the lucky recipient.

*We have been here long enough now to say that we love our new ward. It's full of nice-fun-crazy people with problems, just like us!

*It's supposed to be 80 degrees today.

*Even though it's part of their daily chores, some of my kids still freak out when I ask them to unload their portion of the dishwasher. I have this conversation at least once a day: "Do you realize that if you just did it, you'd be done in a minute; instead of throwing yourself on the ground and causing a scene, which takes about five minutes to get over, and just makes me mad." (My portion of the conversation is usually said at a high volume to be heard over the wailing.)

* "It's not rocket science anymore, hon." -Greg
"What isn't?" -Me
"Figuring you out." -Greg