Public Service Announcement for Potential Babysitters

The night before my sister Kaylie was born, I screamed. And screamed. And screamed. My aunt Cheryl was watching me at the time, and she said the only way she was able to calm me down was by singing the ABC song over and over and over. If she ever stopped, I would scream. This was my first glimpse into the fact that I was not the easiest child ever.*

Thinking of this story again made me ponder which songs are almost certain to calm Joseph down. For the first few months after he was born, I could sing "You're okay" to the tune of Jingle Bells and that would do the trick. But I haven't sung that lately so I didn't think that would work anymore.

On our way home from the Toronto airport, I found our answer. Joseph had been amazing for the 8 hour flight home from France, but it was a bit much to ask for him to have a 4 hour drive on top of that. So he was upset. And screaming. And screaming. And nothing I was doing worked. That is, until I started singing "There was a little house" to him. The screaming stopped. It was a miracle.

Since you might not have heard this song before, here it is with the actions demonstrated by Joseph:

If you can handle hearing my scratchy, sick voice over and over again, I'd recommend watching it over and over until you have it memorized.

Just in case.

*The second glimpse came when my mom told me that a friend of hers would always qualify any compliment of me with, "And to think she was such a difficult child!" Since then, I've heard more and more evidence against my case. Sorry Mom. Sorry Dad. Sorry everyone who dealt with me before I could read.

I don't always wear T-shirts, but when I do . . .

. . . they have a lot of useful information on them.

Take, for example:

1. My calculus T-shirt.

I considered ironing this, but who irons T-shirts? Plus, the wrinkledness adds to the charm.

I love it.

This shirt was designed by Ben Allred back when we were all juniors in AP Calc together. Although I was initially hesitant to spend $6 on a T-shirt, it turned out to be a wise investment. For example, when it came time for Nerd Day during homecoming week my senior year, I had no trouble deciding what to wear.

Kevin was on his mission at the time. We concluded he must not have been working very hard that day.

I have to admit, I really felt like I was in my natural element dressed like that. (And lest you think me woefully socially maladjusted, I want to remind you that I was voted senior ball royalty less than 2 months later. I mean, it couldn't have been a pity vote, right? . . . ) It was an easy and fun Halloween costume for several years of college. (But that's another story.)

Besides its aesthetic value, it's even come in handy. Once or twice it was faster for me to grab the shirt than it was for Kevin to look up an integration table online. You can't beat that.

So, thank you, Ben, for making such a great T-shirt. And congratulations for landing a job back at Mountain Crest. I hope you make many math T-shirts for your students.

2. My geography bowl shirt.

Yes. I still own this. I wore it as recently as Joseph's birthday, even.

And this is how it used to fit:

Why have I held onto this shirt? Although our team did pretty well, it's not the memories that make me keep it. It's the awesome border.


I dunno. I just like it. It makes me feel cultured. And since I only wear it every other year or so, it's still in remarkably good condition.

3. The math love shirt.

This is a newer addition to my wardrobe, but I think it's going to stay for a while. Last summer, Kaylie and I went shopping at DI. At one point when my back was turned, I heard her laughing at a shirt. She showed it to me:

I took a good long look at it and then said, "I think I need to own this."

And I've worn it ever since. Regularly.

Why do I bring all of these up? Well, besides, general narcissism, I've decided that it's high time that this blog has a contest!

Amazing Nerdy T-Shirt Contest!!!

There are two parts to this contest.

1. Can you identify each of the 26 landmarks on my geography bowl shirt?

2. Can you identify or describe each of the 30 expressions/figures on my math heart shirt?

Instructions:
1. Compose an email to staplestacosandlove@gmail.com.
2. Number from 1 to 26 for the first T-shirt and 1 to 30 for the second.
3. For the first shirt, label the landmarks from left to right in the order given. For the second shirt, begin with the upper right equation (since it looks like it's in its own row) and then continue moving left to right, row by row. I figure that adjacent equations are different enough that if you have them right, I'll be able to tell. If this is not the case, I might add labels to the image to remove any ambiguity. Of course, the more descriptive you are, the less likely it is that problems will arise.
4. Send the email.

Rules:
1. No internet. None.
2. You can use books. But only books made with paper. No electronic copies, even if those books have once existed as paper. (See 1.)
3. No collaboration. It'll make the prize too complicated.

Prize:
Whoever has the most right for the first T-shirt will win a $5 Amazon gift card. Whoever has the most right for the second T-shirt will also win a $5 Amazon gift card. Whoever has the most right overall will win a $5 Amazon gift card. So if you do this in less than half an hour and win, it's better than minimum wage.
(Oh, and if several people have it correct, the prize will go to the person who was first.)

This contest ends on July 1st, 8 am, Eastern time.

Good luck!

I see London, I see France

. . . only, you won't find them here. I've decided to do the attack of the travelogue on Facebook, not on the blog. I'll talk about what stuff we learned and tips here and maybe describe France more in words since our picture taking experienced exponential decay there. But in terms of actual pictures on the blog, probably won't post too many more. (You know me. I like to ramble more than to take pictures. Not such a visual learner.)

I dunno. I just feel like it would be boring to say "And then we saw this, and the weather was like this, and here's a picture" when I already have them up somewhere else.

But never fear. If you aren't already my Facebook friend (or don't even have facebook, Dad), here are the links to the albums (this will be edited as I add more):

Flowers at the London Temple
Cambridge, Bath, Stourhead, Stonehenge
Warwick, etc
London
Paris part 1
Paris part 2

hmm. Come to think of it, maybe I should have been doing this with all my Facebook albums of Joseph all along.

And since this has been kind of a nothing post, I'll at least favor you with a video we took at Warwick Castle.

The end.

Learning to share the gospel

I've never really considered myself a perfectionist. As the semesters of college progressed, I turned in as sloppy of homework as I could get away with. As I am typing this, I see toys scattered across the rug, and it doesn't bother me. If I'm in a bad mood, I rarely try to hide it, figuring that owning my bad mood will make it go away faster.

Ironically, these things may still prove I am a perfectionist deep down -- I don't want to be lifted up as a role model since I'm not perfect. I don't want to be pointed to as a good example of a female engineer because I didn't always put forth the effort I could have. I feel incredibly apologetic if someone comes into my house when the dishes aren't done. And I feel sheepish whenever someone tells me I'm a kind person because I don't feel like one a lot of the time (and want to instead list off the people who seem much friendlier).

I realized recently that this unhealthy attitude has hampered my missionary efforts in a lot of ways. Although I've talked to others about my faith when they already know I'm LDS, it's rare that I voluntarily bring up religion. After all, how dare I suggest the gospel to a neighbor when I've fallen short as a Christian and been completely out of the loop about the neighbor's trials? Am I good Mormon even though I don't sign up for every service project?

Looking at these attitudes on the screen makes me realize how silly they are. And yet I have let them hold me back from sharing the sweet fruit of the gospel with those around me. However, an experience I had last week has given me confidence in sharing the gospel.

When we went to Europe, I really really wanted to have a missionary experience. While in England, I think people were able to tell we were Mormon based on the fact that we were from Utah (even knowing that a wine list would be pointless for us), but I never took the opportunity to share the gospel.

And then we went to France. We were welcomed in proper French style -- there was a transportation strike earlier that day. That meant that we got to take the train into Paris for free, but we arrived much later than anticipated. I had no way to contact our Airbnb hosts, so I felt incredibly embarrassed when we showed up close to midnight. To make matters worse, I guess we hadn't made clear that we were bringing a 1-year-old along. Surprise! How could we be good missionaries if our first impression had gone so awry?

Then came Sunday. Up til then, we had only had two brief interactions with our hosts, and both were on Friday. But when we came back from our adventures, there was our hostess on the couch, ready to chat with us about our adventures.

"This is it," I thought. Just mention that we went to church this morning. But fear of being a bad representative of my church kept my mouth shut, and I started talking instead about the lovely gardens we had seen.

Luckily, Kevin spoke up. "We also went to church this morning." The questions started to come. What church? Where is it located? Who goes to church while on vacation (let alone all three hours of it)?

At this point, Joseph was hungry, so I went into another room to feed him. But I heard Kevin talking about our lay ministry, some of our beliefs, and even our shared conviction for traditional marriage*. It was neat to see how much we had in common.

The next day, when we came back from our Parisian adventures, more questions about the Church came rolling in. No, men can't have more than one wife. Yes, they could until 1890 but not anymore. No, it's not just an American religion -- of the 15 million members, more reside outside the US than in. Yes, there are Mormons in France (although I guessed 50,000 when it's more like 30,000). Yes, we emphasize the importance of family, just like Catholics. As we talked, I felt such joy in sharing something so dear to me, even though the conversation didn't delve into major beliefs.

On Tuesday, we were up by 6. I felt embarrassed again to be keeping our hosts up at such ungodly hours, but I didn't beat myself up about it this time. As we left, they smiled again at Joseph, calling him mignon (cute) for the hundredth time, and telling him he would grow up to be a good and smart boy because his parents were part of such a wonderful religion.

Wow. Somehow we had been good examples of our religion after all. How did this miracle take place? We didn't have to be artificially perky, apologetic, pedantic, or perfect. We just were where we were supposed to be on Sunday, and we brought it up in conversation. That's all it took, and then the Spirit took over**.

So, if you're like me and let your perceived inadequacies prevent you from sharing the gospel, don't worry so much!  I learned that I didn't have to be a perfect example of my religion to plant seeds of faith -- I loved it, and that was enough.

And it will always be enough.

*If you haven't heard about this, it's worth looking at. Keep in mind that Paris has only 2.2 million people, so to have 1 million people at a protest is unbelievable. Kind of cool to meet people who participated!

**Well, it also probably helped that Joseph was an angel baby the whole stay. Miracles happen.

Driving in England

We were very lucky to be able to borrow one of the Seamons' cars while we were there. Although England has an excellent train system, we didn't want to use it all that much because
a) It's expensive! I don't understand why, but things like going to London cost 50 pounds each. (We ended up driving up to London and then taking the Underground in, which was still a bit pricey but not as bad.)
b) It could be kind of slow. We took the train from Bicester to Oxford and it took closer to an hour than I would have liked for a 14 mile trip. And even the trains that were faster for longer trips would have stopped in London first, so going from Oxford to Cambridge would have still taken much longer than driving.
c) Joseph didn't really like the train because we wouldn't let him leave each time the doors opened.

So, we drove. We even lucked out enough to get an automatic instead of a manual. The only downside was that the steering wheel was on the left like it is in the states rather than the right like the rest of the cars in Britain. So visibility was a little limited. But easier that than trying to learn how to drive stick backwards in two days.

And, you know, it wasn't too bad really. I mean, Kevin did all the driving, so I can't really talk. But it seems like drivers were generally courteous, speed limits were reasonable often enough, and traffic wasn't horrendous.

However, we did run into a few quirks.

1. While everyone in the US was freaking out about the government spying on us (I sure hope the NSA appreciates the work I put into my Facebook statuses, by the way), we got to enjoy the British government spying on us all the time, too. Via cameras. Everywhere. For speeding. For going into bus lanes. For any reckless behavior they might catch on one of the multitudinous cameras along the road. And if they didn't have a camera tracking your speed at a specific location, never fear -- they also used cameras to track average speed. That is, if you traveled too fast between two speed cameras, then they could tell you were speeding, so they'd mail you a ticket. Lovely. (Eric and Becca, if you are reading this, we promise to pay any tickets we may have accidentally acquired.)

2. Not, of course, that you had to worry too much about speeding. You see, our understanding was that if the speed limit wasn't posted, then it was 60 mph or 70 mph depending on the road. But that wasn't everybody's understanding. No, it was a truth universally acknowledged by truck drivers that a good speed limit was 40 mph, particularly where there were no passing lanes. Oh well. At least we got to see the beautiful English countryside for longer.

3. There are so many roundabouts. So many. When my parents visited England 13 years ago, it sounds like roundabouts were really scary with everyone zipping through them. But since everyone has been subdued by all the cameras, they actually were pretty user friendly. With a few exceptions.

Milton Keynes: What happens when you cross Milton Friedman with John Maynard Keynes? You get a lot of roundabouts. Apparently, this town was built in the 1950s in a more American style. That is, the town had a grid system rather than the typical curvy English roads. But with a grid system, you get more intersections. And since intersections in England are riddled with roundabouts, you get
a
whole
lot
of
roundabouts.

Oh my word. On our way to Cambridge (our second day there) we hit like 32 roundabouts. And it was kind of silly because you'd have a 70 mph section for like a mile, and then you'd have to slow down to go through a roundabout. Talk about wasting gas. And then once we got to Milton Keynes, we had like 25 in a row. Every half mile, the GPS would say in her cool British accent, "enter roundabout. Take 2nd exit." Over and over and over and over again. At least by the end of the day, Kevin was very confident in roundabouts. And only got honked at once.

Swindon: The next day, as we were driving back from Stonehenge and Avebury, the GPS in its infinite wisdom decided to first take us on the skinniest roads it could, and then take us through the middle of Swindon instead of finding a route outside the city. And it just seemed kind of crazy. Some of the roundabouts seemed to not follow any rules. One in particular just seemed like it was a mess. Since by this point I had joined Joseph in the back, I couldn't really see what was going on, but it looked like chaos. Sheer chaos. We stayed there for a few seconds and then Kevin just followed the car in front of him, who happened to be going to the same street we wanted to go on. "I have no idea what I just did," he said. But we lived. And maybe didn't even get a ticket.

That night, at dinner, we mentioned to the Seamons that we had driven on some crazy roundabouts in Swindon. "Wait. Did you go through the Magic Roundabout???" Eric asked excitedly. He then began describing this crazy intersection which had some people going one way, others going the other, with no one really knowing what they were doing. Sounded a little different from what we had encountered, but when we looked at the map, sure enough . . .

Image from the Wikipedia article.

On just his second day of driving in England, Kevin survived the Magic Roundabout. They have T-shirts for that, you know.

4. The roads were so narrow there. After we saw Stonehenge, we decided to go up to Avebury to see similar rocks, just not in a circle. The drive there was insane, though. We had to go on some back roads to get there. Now, in Utah, you can often go for a few miles without seeing anyone else on back roads. But in England, the population is so much denser that there wasn't a single road we went on that was ever empty. And these roads were no exception.

Only problem was, these roads couldn't really fit two cars.

Believe it or not, sometimes there were cars parked on the side of the road even. I don't even remember how we got around them because I think there were cars coming the opposite direction. Probably magic.

At one point, we got stuck behind a tour bus going about 20 mph under whatever was posted. Normally we might have been a little annoyed, but instead we considered ourselves lucky because the tour bus would lead the way and plow down any opposition from the other side of the road. Between that and the Magic Roundabout and Joseph's fussing, we were very happy to get home that evening.

Oh, and speaking of narrow roads . . . sometimes they made the roads narrow on purpose. When we were driving to church in Banbury, we came across an area which was too narrow for both lanes of traffic to make it through. So, there were signs instructing one side of the road to give way to the other lane of traffic for that brief stretch.

Only problem was, those signs were the reason the road was too narrow. Were it not for the concrete slabs in the middle of the road, you wouldn't need to give way at all! Those tricky Brits.

See what I mean?

5. The street signs are a bit different. Instead of stop signs, there are yield signs gently asking the driver to "give way." The speed limit signs don't actually say "speed limit" on them, just a number. (I think we might have missed some of those signs the first day.)

And (my favorite), when you go into a town, they don't tell you to reduce your speed. No, they say to

taken from here

No gentle language here. We want that speed dead. Kevin laughed because it reminded him of Engrish signs he would see in China.

Other than these quirks, driving in England was great!

The party that shouldn't make it to Pinterest

After we came home from the walk, it was time for Joseph's birthday party! Since he really likes rubber ducks, we decided to do a duck theme. But since it wasn't a party for kids per se, I sort of had to improvise.

The cake:

Yup, just your basic chocolate cake mix. Some combination of powdered sugar and milk and butter and food coloring for the frosting. Beak made of strawberries. I considered doing something like a crumb coat to frost the whole cake better, but in the end I just wanted to eat the cake more than look at it.

The decorations:

We bought balloons, but the pack didn't even had any yellow ones. So we put up orange and blue balloons around the living room. We still hadn't (haven't) taken down the pink and purple streamers from my birthday, so it pretty much looked amazing.

The games:

What kind of games can you play with a duck theme that adults will appreciate but won't bore a 1-year old? The answer is, no games. But here's what we did.

Pictionary: A few weeks ago, I happened to check out a book from the library called Ten Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle.

In the book, the ducks fall overboard on their way from the factory and drift off into the ocean meeting various animals. After reading the book, we went upstairs to this:

On the back of each duck, there was an animal that the ducks had run into. Each of us took turns grabbing a duck and drawing the animal on the back (I don't think we kept score or anything). To make the game more complicated, the person drawing the animal had to hold Joseph on their lap. That part didn't work so well. But hey, it was still fun. And my family humored me.

Name that tune: The next game had two parts. The first was a treasure hunt where each team had to find the ducks that were hidden throughout the living room and kitchen. Once all the ducks were recovered, we played name that tune with the songs written on the back of each duck.

But these weren't just any songs we were singing. No, this game was inspired by the Love Ducks, which come from one of my favorite Arthur episodes ever.

In this episode, the Love Ducks is a bizarre TV show involving colored ducks that quack classical tunes. So that's what we did. Each team had one minute turns to quack famous classical songs to their team members.

Goofiest game ever? Yes. I can't believe I'm even admitting that I made this game up.

But Joseph loved it. He crawled around quacking with us, so I considered it a success.

And then came cake! Joseph went straight for the strawberries and was more interested in making a mess with the cake than eating it. But eventually he ate plenty of it.

We vacuumed.

We decided to wait until the next morning to open presents. I think they were a hit. Especially the ball.

Grandparents are not for smiling at

Well, maybe they are

So, there you have it -- Joseph's 1st birthday. We think he's worth celebrating. :D

Birthday birthday birthday

Once upon a time, I had a baby named Joseph.

And then one fabulous day in May, he turned one!

The whole weekend was fabulous, actually. My mom and Jennie decided to come visit us so that we could see Jennie before she leaves on her mission to Atlanta in July. And then my dad decided to come too. And they happened to come the birthday weekend. So it was all around awesome.

The weekend started out with us meeting at the Detroit Temple where Kevin, Jennie, and I did a session while my parents watched Joseph. I think we all sort of expected him to scream the whole time, but he surprised us by not really crying at all. Or smiling. Or showing any emotion except for the time when my mom recited the beginning of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to him and tears started to fall down his cheeks. Just stoic and serious. (Meanwhile, I got to experience the joy of being that person during a session who just needed to cough and cough and cough and suppressing it made it worse. I have a lot more sympathy for that person at concerts and such now.)

On the ride home, Joseph and Jennie bonded in the back seat with blowing raspberries at each other. We had Palm Palace for dinner and then spent the evening chatting and despairing of the way the world is headed (in particular how stupid the math curriculum is these days). That night, as he is wont to do whenever a celebration is nigh (eg 4th of July, Halloween, Kevin's birthday, Christmas, Valentine's, my birthday, and now his birthday), Joseph slept terribly and woke up several times in the night. But whether or not we sleep well, at least we have him!

After church and lunch and naps, we decided to walk along the river.

He was not really into smiling.

One of very few smiles we caught on the walk.

Family picture! Joseph mostly looked at the runners going by instead of the camera.

His "I'm not being held by mom right now but I'm not sad enough to cry" face

Favorite aunt?

And then we went home. And had a party. Stay tuned.

Attack of the travelogue!!!

We are home!!! Today I woke up the earliest that I have ever woken up in my life (5:45 in France, which is 11:45 ET, 9:45 MT (ie you probably went to bed after I woke up)), took an 8 hour flight home to Toronto, drove 4 hours from Toronto to Ann Arbor, and now we are home!

We are exhausted. Joseph is exhausted and hyper and happy and giddy. And I have like a billion blog posts I am going to write about all this. Probably in more of a journal form than I normally do posts. Maybe complete sentences. Or maybe I'll just put most all the pictures on Facebook and share tidbits here.

Either way, we're back! We went to England and France with a 1-year-old and lived to tell the tale! And thank you to everyone who helped us so much. Thanks to those who detailed their trips so we could get ideas for where to go. Thanks to everyone for your advice and tips and encouragement. Social media is amazing.

Over the next few days, I'll try and document what we saw while we were in Europe. In the meantime, here's  a trick that Joseph learned while there: