Awesome mom-some

Last year, I realized something kind of sad. The day that a woman gives birth, people say congratulations to her and say good job with labor and all that. But every year after that on that day, it's all about the baby. "Happy birthday!" they say. "Way to . . . be alive."

Now, I imagine that being born isn't the most pleasant experience (luckily, we all forget it), but shouldn't we still be congratulating the mom?

Normally, I would say the answer is no. Joseph's first birthday is going to be all about him, not about me.

But still, having been through childbirth now, I feel like I ought to thank my mom this year. Way to give birth to me! Way to deal with 12 extra days with me in the womb and then survive mastitis and blowouts and clinginess and whininess in the subsequent months. I appreciate you keeping me alive.

If that was all she did, my mom would be a pretty amazing person. But there's even more. (And I'm even going to leave out the most mushy and awesome and amazing stuff to leave you all in suspense.)

In no particular order, here are 23 reasons to celebrate my mom today:

1. She let us ride sleeping bags and pillows down the stairs.

2. She listened to the popular music more than we did in high school. I remember one time when I was riding the bus down to Allstate Choir that I decided to pull out "Mom's Mix 1" to listen to. My friend Brycen was intrigued and asked to listen. Imagine his surprise when artists such as Maroon 5 and Goo Goo Dolls came up. He wondered if the CD had been mislabeled and then began to joke about going to Green Day concerts with my mom. You have to be a pretty cool mom for that to happen.

3. In fact, she's always been cool when it came to music. As a teenager, she liked to jam to Sesame Street music. Even when members of the ward came over.

4. She taught math and English in junior high for a few years. That's cool on its own, but since she kept a lot of her old papers, we got to see historic documents like papers with fragrant purple ink. I don't think I would know what a mimeograph was otherwise.

5. She has read A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. That impressed my dad so much that he wanted to marry her.

6. Speaking of their courtship, from first real conversation to engagement was 18 days. Talk about love at first sight.

I don't think my grandpa even knew who my dad was until they were engaged.

7. She has always been good at throwing creative parties. In particular, I remember one party where we watched Ever After and then she would pause the movie for us to do an activity related to the movie. Like when Danielle was pretending to be royal, we all pretended to be royal by balancing books on our head and walking around. Then there was the holiday birthday party where we went through basically all the major holidays in one party (a mini easter egg hunt, going to the neighbors for a little bit of trick-or-treating, decorating gingerbread houses, etc.) And this was before Pinterest even existed.

8. She sewed many of our Halloween costumes. I liked the eagle costume so much, she made me another one when I outgrew the first.

9. And speaking of sewing,
She did this:

plus she made one for my best friend Rebecca in 1st grade and we wore our sunflower dresses every Thursday.

10. One year she had a really good peach harvest so she made a different peach pie recipe every day for like a week! Tragically, I didn't like peaches back then (you pick up enough rotting ones as a child, you get a little scarred) so I didn't appreciate it.

11. She's not afraid of snakes. One time, we were out on a walk near the river on a Sunday afternoon. Some of our neighbors with kids Spencer's age were on the same trail. When they saw a snake, my mom picked it up and showed it to all the boys. I think she won some little boy points that day.

12. Also, iguanas.

13. Strange as it sounds, sometimes waiting for the bus before the sun came up in the dead of winter in Cache Valley could be a little cold. And I guess my mom thought we had enough character without freezing to death, so when it was like 3 degrees (maybe warmer), she would drive down to the bus stop and let us hang out in the minivan until the bus came. And this included everyone, even the scary high school boys. The only downside was that they knew which car belonged to our family, which stopped being cool when I was about 12.

This one. That's why I'm driving it to heaven. (Oh, and my dad wants everyone to know that the decals did not cost extra.)

14. Speaking of driving, she and my dad were good at taking us places. Do you remember my chapter called "The Drive" in Hello, Kristie where all the kids threw up? That's there because I thought that that was a normal occurrence in the car. And even with that to look forward to, she didn't stop taking us on trips.

15. She looks good in anything. Even a 70s prom dress that she always wore as a pioneer costume.

16. She was never the first to pick us up from parties. I think this was a deliberate attempt to make us cooler.

17. She managed to keep not only my dad and six kids alive (as well as cousins, foreign exchange students, and friends who lived with us), but also a garden, orchard, some roses (usually), and our yard. I have yet to develop this ability, considering how much I struggle keeping any flowers from Kevin alive.

18. One time for an elementary school carnival she dressed up as Oreo the panda bear, our school mascot. That is the one and only time that I haven't been afraid of a person in costume.

19. She once took a career test and it told her she should be a clown. Considering how organized, detail-oriented, and analytical she was, it seems like the test was crazy. But once you've seen her as a Primary chorister, it almost seems like the test was spot-on. (Unfortunately, I was too embarrassed to appreciate it when I was in Primary.)

20. She is kind and friendly to everybody, even the ones who call her Barb.

21. She has green eyes. And she is left-handed.

22. She always appreciated our performances and praised our efforts. I remember one time shortly after I started playing the violin (a short-lived stint) that I decided to learn "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail one afternoon. Then I decided that I could sing the alto part while playing the soprano part on the piano. So kind of the worst sounding thing ever. But she listened to my performance and just said tactfully at the end, "I think you should try just singing the melody." (though she probably just wanted me to be silent as death)

23. She has taught me joy. Looking at my blog and especially at this list, you might think I had the perfect childhood. I'd say it was ideal in many ways, but definitely not perfect. We fought. Tempers were lost. Feelings were hurt. We dealt with real struggles, just like any family.
But . . . I am able to look back at childhood with joy, and a lot of that is thanks to my mom. She is a happy, optimistic person who found joy in the gospel, marriage, work, music, reading, planning, and especially motherhood. Because of her example, I have always been able to look forward happily to motherhood instead of dreading the drudgery.

So, hooray for my mom! Thanks again for having me 23 years ago!

The pearly gates

One of Sister Hinckley's most famous (and incorrectly attributed) quotes is

“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.

I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”

Well, maybe it's just that I haven't lived as long as she did, but I can't quite say I fully agree with her. Sticky cheeks? Peanut buttery shirts? No thank you. A bit of spit-up on my shirt might be okay. And if there's dried flour beneath my fingernails from making rolls for people, that's okay too. But I'd really like to drive up with my legs shaved and my hair washed.

Regardless of my appearance, I'd like to drive up to the pearly gates in this:

1991 Plymouth Grand Voyager. The decals cost extra.

That's all I ask.

Autocorrect

Last night I got an email from Leslie. She was playing with autocorrect by typing the word "here" and then using the predictive text autocorrect chose, from most likely to least likely.

Here is a disaster but I have a nice to be creative commons FlickrBlog and the thumbnail true that I have a nice

Here are the thumbnail to this pic I am not a status basically go shopping because of my constant and I have no access the making it home before you can be an hour and I have no access

Here you have to wait and the Titanic the time tonight show the time to learn those three and the Titanic to go out driving but the making a little more successful and also my blog and also karma the time tonight and also the thumbnail format you'd moved into my list today and also my advice and also karma is the thumbnail format for a quick look good story now we are a lot but the last batch file is not one to the Jordan and it autocorrect the time to get a little bit not have been embarrassed if someone who episode is not quite like a grown-up and also the kind words of wisdom is the very next to be the first one is the most important that the making a lot but maybe some other plans except perhaps a few seconds of my earlier self esteem to get the making it a few hours I was going through wise and also my list that is working with a cashier's and also karma the making a joke that was the thumbnail to get a lot left the time I had the making it is a piano music video for you and your loans for you have of me but it almost seems too picky


Words fail me.

Once upon a time . . .

. . . on a cold, drizzly morning in April, we got married.

Looking back, I may have been a bit too casual about the whole affair, stubbornly refusing to care about things like shoes, makeup, nails, or having the perfect dress. I didn't care if people wore the right colors or not. I didn't stress too much about if my friends made it or not since most of them were in Provo and the rest I hadn't hung out with much since high school. Bridals? Out of the question. Eating ice cream in the reception line so that I had to shake hands with sticky fingers? Sure why not. (As a side note, I wanted to go get more ice cream and actually wondered if they would notice, but then I realized that I was kind of noticeable in a big white dress.) First dance with husband at the reception? Nope -- didn't choose a song. Dance with dad at the reception? Nope -- didn't want to cry. When the reception had gone about 15 minutes longer than the invitation said, I decided that it was basically over, so Kevin and I went up the stairs and out of there, no bouquet toss or anything. And that was that.

But hey, we were married!

And it's been a party ever since.


by the way, thank you Mom for caring a bit more than I did so that it was actually pretty classy. I really wouldn't have minded if you had used sticks from the backyard as centerpieces, though.

I think I missed my calling in life

After showcasing Leslie's wonderful story, I decided that it was only fair that I share some of my amazingness from my writer days. Although there was a ton to choose from, I think the best is Hello, Kristie, which I wrote for a family Christmas present when I was 10.

Guys. I worked so hard on it. I started recording it so blind people could have a book on tape. I made paper dolls of the main character with her various accessories. I planned sequels upon sequels to sort of match the American Girl Doll series.

And after all of that planning, I still ended up majoring in engineering. What was I thinking? What book publisher wouldn't have picked this up immediately? I mean, see for yourself!

Chapter 1

The Invitation

Kristie swung her backpack into her locker by the back door and yelled "I’m home!" as usual. She heard the sound of paper hitting the back of her locker as unusual. She looked at it. It was an envelope that was from her friends Janelle and Julianne. They were twins who were inseparable, so of course it was from both of them. 

She ripped the top off and pulled the letter out. It was folded up and on the front it said: "Your bills."  She knew better than to believe that. She ripped of the tape and a 50-cent coin fell to the floor. Taped to it was a note saying, "This will definitely come in handy." 

She put it into her locker, then read the letter. It said:

"Dear Kris,

We got you cool tickets! Dad bought forty-five. We have no idea why he got that many, but we have nine hidden in our special spot.”

 Their "special spot" was really special. Julianne could split paper and hide cool things in it. Janelle would sew it together so one ever knew anything was hidden unless they ripped it or they were told. Kristie kept reading.

“The tickets are for "George’s Marvelous Beach." George is our dad's boss and he's giving us tickets to his beach. He normally only lets family go there, but he has a very special fondness for our dad so we get to go for 25 cents per ticket. These tickets are for your whole family.

“The fifty-cent piece is for a cool game he does with them. If you use any piece in any way at any of the shops, you are put in a drawing. Whoever wins gets all the pieces plus a surfboard and a porcelain figure. 

“And we bet you’re wondering how we knew all this. We knew this because these things are on the tickets. We had our dad explain them to us, so it would only be fair to explain them to you.

“We know your mom will let you come, so hope to see you there. Or sooner!

The (In?) famous Twins of California  

Kristie smiled and ran to her mom to show her the tickets.

"Better go close your locker. The others might come fast up the hill," her mom said even before Kristie finished opening her mouth. 

"Okay," sighed Kristie as she trudged back to her locker.

Sometimes lockers were such a pain. They were okay at school, she guessed, but at home, pu-lease. They also had two drinking fountains. Sometimes she thought her house was an old school that was blown up and only little parts were saved, but her mom said the lockers weren't even there when they moved in.

I would've guessed you wouldn't be so foolhardy to buy them, she sometimes thought, like right now.

The twins were lucky they didn't have lockers anywhere. They were home-schooled, and their parents just had cool shelves and hooks for their stuff.

Of course, there were good points about lockers. She never thought about the good points, though. She did think about how careful her parents were about them. No one ever found out each other’s locker combinations, and at least her parents had enough sense to make the lockers twice the size as the ones at school. 

She put everything in the locker, shut it, and went to show her mom the tickets.

This time Kristie got to tell her about them. Her mom saw the tickets and pondered. Kristie thought it was sort of a waste of time to sit there thinking. It had something for all the kids.   "All right," said her mom, "just as long as you make sure we all get fifty-cent coins and you promise me no one will be bored."

"Yes to both of those. It must be really cool to have your own private city and part of the ocean." 

"Maybe . . ." said her mom, finding something else to do than talk about private--what was it? Oh well. 

Chapter Two  

The Word Bicker

In this chapter, I promise only to use the word “bicker” five times.  That’s not a lot, but you’ll probably get tired of it.

52 minutes later, the door slammed open.

“Mommy, look what I made at Juno kindergarten!” (Marianne)

"It's Junior kindergarten not Juno, you goose head!” (Jared)

"Mommy, he called me a goose head!” (Marianne)

"I saw lots of kids with braces and they said I need them.  I don't, do I..." (Melissa)

"Why does Kristie get home before me? I leave for the bus at the same time-" (Rick)

"If I'm a goose head, you're a "Cunky Dunky!" (Marianne)

"There's no such thing!" (Jared) 

"Yes there is. I said so!" (Marianne)

"Isn't anyone listening to me? I brush my teeth but..."(Melissa)

"wAAAgh!!" (Alexis and Alex)

The bickering stopped. The babies were awake. That only meant one thing: time to put everyone's stuff in their lockers.

That was the usual thing that happened at 3:34. Bickering, crying, more bickering, chewing, nothing, bickering, and stomping were the sounds you'd here if you were at their home from 3:35 to 3:55.  

Rick should have been getting home forty-five minutes sooner, but this month (which was the month of April) he was in a school play that rehearsed from 2:45 to 3:25. From there he would ride the activity bus to the elementary school he used to go to, then he would walk the younger siblings home. He hated walking with them, 

but he lived sort of far away from school and didn't want to walk home.

"Guess what?" said Mom in the middle of the nothing. "We have tickets to a--"

"Let me guess. The play on Main Street about a princess falling in love." (Rick)

"Oh, I wish so, but it's probably for a monotonous football game." (Melissa)

"It's not monotonous!  Dinosaur Rangers is--" (Rick)

"It better be for the new Dinosaur Rangers movie, but I bet it's--"

"George’s Marvelous Beach!" shouted Kristie, completely fed up with all the bickering. It was on the schedule, wasn't it.

However, it will change a little. Instead of stomping, there was groaning and slow, quiet steps.

Mom called Dad and told him of the tickets. She wasn't too happy about the difference in the schedule. Dad said he'd love to go, even if only Kristie really wanted to go as bad as he.

Meanwhile, upstairs there was bicke--I mean, um, um, chitchat, no, um, blahhing going on. (who cares if it's not a word!)

It all stopped when Mom called to them, "Guess what? We're going right now. Bring 16 pairs of clothes. Bring all the necessities. You know what I mean. I've notified your teachers. 

“Let's go!!!!!"

“Why did the author have Mom use so many of these"!" ? I know from 5 years at the school that you're only supposed to use one."

"Who cares?"

"Melissa age 9, fourth grade."

"I don't. I, who have had 7 years of schooling know that I WANT THE CHAPTER TO END SO I CAN GO!!!!!!!!!"

"You used too many."

Chapter 3

The Drive

Now that the new chapter has started, we are now able to get into the family car. Rick is listening to Chopin, Debussy, and Clementi, but he claims to be listening to "Ralph Danny," a famous rock star of a teenager. That's why he is using headphones. The rest of the family loves Ralph Danny, but if he were to take his headphones off he'd be the laughingstock for the rest of the vacation. 

Kristie is rubbing her fifty-cent coin in her hands, and is daydreaming about the vacation and how great and adventurous the vacation could be. All of the sudden, she falls asleep.

Melissa is writing poems about young women and drawing them. She is only using one exclamation point at a time. She could get her work in a French museum, but first she'd have to realize that you shouldn't draw nostrils on your people. That's all. She makes them have the funniest expressions on their faces, but the expressions are every day ones. Her poems are really good, too. She knows how to find the right words so everything will rhyme and rhythm. She is also snacking on an apple granola bar.

Jared is coloring dinosaurs in his Dinosaur Rangers coloring book. Having only sixteen colors, his pictures are obviously going to be boring. Practically every dinosaur is gray or orange. He is doing his best to sing the theme song but  . . . 

Marianne is eating Twizzlers and trying to sing at the same time. She learned a song called Peanut Butter and Jelly.  She also is playing Barbies and making stories out of it.

The twins, Alex and Alexis (both are girls by the way) are like Kristie (asleep). They are both dreaming about throwing up. Marianne tries to feed them Twizzlers. All of the sudden, (it's no longer present tense)    

Bump. 

It is a time every person has experienced in the car: food coming up your throat and hopefully into your blanket, which smells bad enough already from being in the car.

First Alexis threw up and that made her wake up. Alex heard her sister and felt the need to experience the same trauma as Alexis. Marianne finally ate too many Twizzlers and did the same as the others. Jared did it all over his coloring book. 

Melissa got so disgusted by what she saw she felt the need to do the same. She didn't want to ruin her work, so she covered her mouth with her hands and--

The ride was over. She rushed out and did the same as everyone as soon as she got out. Besides the parents, she was the first and unfortunately there was only one door. 

No one came out for a very long time. Kristie and Rick, who were the only ones who hadn't thrown up, were last. Rick was second to last because the song was at a turning point and he couldn't wait to find out if the song ended in D♭ or A♭. Kristie was last because she didn't want to see her mom taken away by the criminal. She saved her mother, got to an island, and woke up to the laughing faces of her family. 

"We should trade places in lives. You're a much better sleeper than me. You would do much better at nap time," said Marianne who, if you have an idea what sisters are like, you know how she said it. 

Kristie rolled her eyes and jumped over the puddle and into the yard. She saw Janelle and Julianne running over to her, which was a long way because his yard was huge.  

And . . . that's all my ego can handle right now. Yikes. The unfortunate thing is that this story has all of the ridiculousness of Leslie's story without any of the high-falutin' language. Ugh. So clunky. I think I was trying to be funny, and I'm afraid it worked.

 Um . . . maybe I didn't miss my calling in life.

Fulfilling my civic duty

I'm ashamed to admit that it's been a while since I posted any videos of Joseph laughing. I clearly haven't been thinking about your blood pressure and endorphin levels.

But good news! I've finally mended my ways, so you can now enjoy Mr. Joseph to your heart's content again.

We sure like him.

Our quick trip to DC

So I was thinking about what I should blog about, and I realized that I hadn't updated the "adventures" category for a while. At least not since we went to DC. More than a month ago. Yeah. And that was sort of an adventure worth documenting.

Anyway, I think I'm going to knock out the trip in one fell swoop. Here goes.

We left on a Saturday morning, enjoying cold, cloudy weather through most of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Interestingly, it seemed like the landscape changed once we hit the Pennsylvania border. Instead of the incredibly straight roads surrounded by trees, suddenly there were miniature mountains (especially when we got off the freeway [which was not free], but even the Pittsburgh area was hilly). As we headed toward Gettysburg, something about the sunlight and mountains and canyons and trees and fields just sang to me, and it reminded me more of Cache Valley than anywhere else I had seen this side of the Mississippi. So I'd be sort of okay living there someday.

We finally reached Gettysburg, arriving at approximately 5:02 in the quaint little town. Conveniently, everything closed at 5:00. So we drove around instead of going in museums. (Come to think of it, last time we went to Gettysburg the museums just had boring guns and battle plans, so I don't feel like I missed much.)

A fence.

A memorial.

A pair of cute boys. One with very long hair.

 After hitting about 3 of the 15 sites on the self tour of Gettysburg, we got bored and drove to Maryland, enjoying Chick-Fil-A on our way into Baltimore. Once there, we stayed with our friends Craig and Roxy from our Inca Villa days. I'm pleased to report they're just as awesome and amazing now as they were then.
We spent all of Sunday and part of Monday morning hanging out with them before heading down to DC, first stopping by the temple.

The DC temple -- so big and beautiful.

After trying out all the nifty new features at the visitors' center, we hopped down to DC. Man, we felt way under dressed. Example: We had Jimmy Johns for lunch and everybody else who was in there was a young professional dressed, well, professionally. At a bland, cheap sandwich shop! Maybe we were just grumpy and frumpy, but everyone seemed kind of self-important. As Kevin noticed, everyone there probably thinks their work is pretty important, even if it's just getting coffee for some senator.

After walking around a bit and seeing the White House, we spent most of the rest of the day in the American History Museum. It's kind of funny how interested we were in the electricity section. As I looked at early batteries and motors with fascination and tried to remember Maxwell's equations and Faraday's law to explain how they worked, I realized that it probably was a good thing I majored in electrical engineering. (Especially interesting to me was the explanation of how fans work.) I felt my interest level completely collapse when I walked into the next room, which was about steam engines and other boring stuff. Guess it's good I didn't do mechanical engineering.

By the time we made it out of that museum, we had hit most every exhibit and were tired. So to the hotel we went.

The next morning, our first stop was the capitol building. The last time I went to DC was before 9/11, and I'm pretty sure we got to go in and take a tour. Naively I had assumed that we would get to do the same thing. As we were walking there though, we ran into someone who said "Oh, you have to talk to your state representative to do that." Way to plan ahead, us. Then we tried the visitors' center, but since we had packed lunches that was also a no-go. But hey, the outside was pretty.

Kevin and the Capitol

Kyra and the Capitol

Sleeping Joseph and the Capitol

  Down we went to the National Mall, walking past the Library of Congress and other beautiful buildings on our way down. After eating an early lunch (since no food was allowed here, either), we went into the Air and Space Museum. Which Kevin found cool. And I . . . you know, I should really find things like lunar modules cool. But I don't. I thought some of the airplane stuff was kind of cool.

He wanted to get out of the stroller any chance he could.

Next stop was the National Gallery. Which was so amazing that I didn't even take any pictures of it. But Dutch art rocks. Wow. I love how much they knew about light. And the mini David statue by Michelangelo was cool.

The next stop was the Natural History Museum. Considering that most animals, fossils, rocks, Neanderthals, the ocean, and insects pretty much top the list of things I don't care about (motorcycles and space stuff are up there too), I'm not sure why we went at all. But I actually really liked it. The displays were well done, the bones were cooler than I give them credit for, and they included enough aesthetically pleasing exhibits that I sort of appreciated natural history. Especially the gems. I was a fan of the Hope diamond.

And the butterflies! On Tuesdays you could go into the butterfly garden for free, and it was incredible!

We didn't let him step on any. We like butterflies better than praying mantises.

After we left, we raced through the rest of the Mall. Hurried past the Washington Monument. Spent a few minutes at the Korean and Vietnam war memorials. Took an elevator to see President Lincoln up close at his memorial (there was no way we were taking the stroller up all those stairs). Spent a few minutes at the MLK memorial. Started walking toward the Jefferson memorial before realizing it was in the absolute middle of nowhere and Joseph was cold and cranky and it was threatening to rain so we just found the nearest Metro station. And I think by then we had sort of had our fill of DC anyway. I know there's a ton we didn't hit, but we hit what we were most interested in, which I guess was the Smithsonians.

And then the next morning we headed home, battling Snowstorm Saturn til we hit Pennsylvania so Kevin could spend the rest of spring break studying for his hundreds of tests the next week. There were parts that were sort of scary, but it definitely wasn't the worst snow two Utah kids have seen. On the bright side, the roads were basically empty.

So now you know how we like to do vacations: Hit as much free stuff as fast as possible, except for when we're looking at the original battery and Dutch art.

The best toys . . . really aren't toys.