Cool Story

Michael got a call today from a guy he worked with at Professional Services at the end of 2005 and then part of 2006. He said he really only worked with him about 2 weeks in a row, saw him a couple times, and roomed with him at one training conference. Anyway, this guy called Michael because he has stopped drinking, is wanting to get better friends and is working on improving his life. He asked Michael if he still goes to church which, of course, he does. He wants to get together with Michael sometime to go shooting or something. Anyway, I just thought that was really neat that Michael made such a positive impression on him. And that this guy would contact him, after not having contact for probably a year, all because he could tell that Michael was someone with morals and values. It's a great lesson. Sometimes we, as Mormons, are made to feel strange, peculiar, etc. for the things we don't do. We don't drink, don't shop on Sundays, don't even have sex before we're married. But, what we try to do is a whole lot of good. Hopefully Michael will be able to make a really positive impact in this guy's life and help him out of the life slump that he's been in. We're glad he reached out for help. The really interesting thing is that this is not the first time this has happened to Michael. There have been several people in the past who have just noticed something different about Michael and wanted to be around that something. He can be an odd duck sometimes (heehee), but he is a pretty awesome quack.

Proud Wife

I just had to share because I'm brimming with pride... Michael had a 100-question test today. He actually did some studying last night (he usually doesn't do much but still gets 90%+!!). Well, he got 100% on his test! He was the only one. In fact, the only one who got over 90%. And, 70% of the other students completely failed the test. Now, I do feel terrible for those other students but I'm completely wowed by my smarty pants hubby. Way to go, Mikey!

Both Sides Equally, Now, Ladies!

I'm really just not going to comment here. But if you know me well, you understand why I put this here. Enough said.

A Mom's Luck

So, it's 2:29 p.m. right now. But I wanted to give you a little timeline of what's happened the last couple of hours to show just how my mom luck goes:

12:30 - Put Maren down for a nap, start making lunches, Evan and I eat
12:45 - Michael gets home
1:00 - Go read Evan a book. While we're reading, Michael comes in and lays on Evan's bed. I'm no fool. I know what's going to happen here.
1:15 - Done with the book, tell Evan to have a nice nap. He says he wants one more book. I tell him that Dad can read him another one but I've got to go start on my work for the day. So, I go start working.
1:45 - I'm running on not so many hours of sleep lately. I'm really tired. I'm working, but not very effectively. My eyes have been shut for the last 5 minutes which throws off my equilibrium and I can't type as fast. I check to see how much more work I have to get done before my 5 p.m. deadline. One hour! I decide that I will finish the file I'm working on and then take a nap. This is really something because I never take naps! Yesterday when I was so exhausted, I put my head down on the desk for five minutes between work, but I was actually planning on getting my body horizontal this time.
2:00 - I'm done with that file. I head to the couch.
2:01:10 - I lay down, put the blanket on.
2:01:25 - I start thinking about how long I will nap for. I then realize that Maren should be waking up around 2:30. That's the perfect amount of time for a nap. Refreshing but not too long. And I'll still have plenty of time to get my work done. I start to relax. I'm loving life. I'm drifting off.
2:01:35 - I hear Maren wake up and start crying. Yes, it's true. Ten seconds! What's crazy is not that it happened this one time, but that it happens all the time. It doesn't matter if I get into bed at 11:30 p.m. or 2:00 a.m. Only moments later is when Maren decides she needs some middle-of-the-night loves. So now Maren and I are playing, the boys are napping, and I'm not sure when I'm going to get my work done. Lucky for Maren, she's awfully cute. :-)

Childhood Memory - Happy Father's Day!

I must've been somewhere around 15. My brother 13, and my sisters 12 & 11. Probably have it all wrong, but something like that. Anyway, the night before Father's Day we decided to have a slumber party in the living room. Well, in the middle of our sleep, there was a noise towards the back of the house that woke us up. Someone was rattling the back door. They were trying to get in! It actually wasn't a door that goes from the outside to the house, but from an added-on, enclosed porch to the kitchen. I decided that since I was the oldest, I needed to protect everyone else. We were all laying on the ground with the couch blocking our view from seeing the perpetrator. I told my sisters to stay down so he wouldn't see them and told my brother to crawl with me to my mom's room where the gun was. I truly have no recollection of where my mom was...whether she was in there and I didn't want to wake her up and scare her or just what. Anyway, my brother found the gun and I told him to load it which he obeyed. :-) Then I told him we needed to sneak around the corner and have the gun ready to shoot in case the guy was able to break into the door. He asked what he should do if they guy got through the door and I told him he should shoot him! So, we're inching along the living room wall. Brandon was looking particularly policeman-like because he had the gun up at the ready. When we got to the corner, Brandon prepared the gun. He popped his head around the side, gun pointed, just as my DAD walked through the door! My dad had slept out in one of the rooms on the porch and needed to get in to go to the bathroom. Someone had locked that door and he had been trying to shake the door loose. So we laughing about the Father's Day when I almost gave the order to shoot my own dad. (Family, how much of this story did I get wrong??)

Brilliant Idea

So, yes, I had what I think is a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. The other day one of my childhood memories surfaced. I don't remember now what brought it up, but I was chuckling to myself. Then I realized that I don't have all these funny stories written down anywhere. Yes, I wrote in my journal as a child and as a teenager, but most of the stuff in there is the guy I liked at the time, stuff about my classes at school, and what part I was playing in The Nutcracker or other ballet going on at the time. Maybe some doodles, and that was that. I decided this would be the perfect place to archive the exceptionally hysterical stories before Alzheimer's sets in (I'm pretty sure I'm destined for it!) and I can't reflect on these memories for warm and fuzzy feelings. When I make one of these postings, I will call it "Childhood Memory - ..." and include a little note to myself of what it was. That way maybe I can sort by that title in the future and have them all together or at least make them easier to find. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy laughing about them now.

Zombie Boy

So, I've been hesitant to put this on here because I don't want anyone talking behind my back about it. But Evan has been sleeping in our bed on and off (Who am I kidding? Mostly ON!) since about April when he had his big whammy of an ear infection. We've had a really hard time getting him out of there. So, we started diligently trying on Sunday. He slept in his bed Sunday night and Monday night. And he's been in his bed for naptime for a little over a week now. But he's not getting much sleep. His naps have been way short. He falls asleep around 10 p.m. and wakes up around 7 a.m. So, he's not been the most pleasant little boy (read: whiny!!) lately.

So, last night I realized he probably had about an 8-hour sleep debt. I told Michael we were starting the bedtime routine at 6:30, which we did. Michael gets him to bed around 8:15. Wow! Then Michael fell asleep and I was on my own. At 11:30, I was working away and just sense something behind me. I turn around and there is Evan. He scares the poo out of me because he is absolutely silent as he walks up so I don't expect anything there. I had to work on lowering my heart rate for about a minute before I could even talk to him. Finally he told me there was a shadow in his room and he was afraid of the shadow. I went in his room to check it out. This shadow was made by the lamp he insists stays on hitting his bedroom door, which was all the way open, and making a shadow behind the door. Just the one inch or so between the back of the door and the wall. Um, okay. So I try for about half an hour to talk him out of being afraid of the shadow. I try to get rid of it by shutting the door a little ways and hanging a towel up over it. I remind him about Peter Pan's shadow. I show him my shadow. I suggest we turn the lamp off so there's no shadow. I'm getting nowhere. Time to call in the smart guy. Dad. So Michael starts talking to him about shadows. They do some experiments. There is laughing and carrying on. But in the end he still wanted to sleep in our bed because he was afraid of the shadow. Michael said, "Evan, if I get rid of the shadow, will you sleep in your own bed?" Evan said he would. I heard Michael go out to the garage (I was back to my work by now!). Then I heard the drill. Michael took Evan's door off. Ha! No door, no door shadow.

I must commend Michael. He really stuck to his guns. Actually, since Sunday night, he has not given in. No matter what time of night, no matter how tired he is, he insists that Evan sleep in his own bed (I was caving after about 5 minutes last night!). And he's really nice and wonderful about it, too. He's a really great dad. Now if I can just get him to get this bedroom door out of the dining area.

Bless You, Dad!

My dad was in town last week for a training (he lives about 5 hours away!). Thursday night after his training was over, he came to our house to clean. Wow! He completely cleaned our kitchen (which DID take from when he got there 4:30 to when he left at 9:30), including the floor. It looks amazing now. And, Dad, I've kept it clean so far. Yea for me! So, I wanted to thank my dad for being amazing and doing that for me. What a huge help! Plus, Evan and Maren really enjoyed having him here. While he was here, Evan decided he wanted to pull up a space shuttle launch on the Internet to show Grandpa. So, here's everybody on the couch watching the launch. Sadly, the only picture I got of my dad while he was here.

As a side note, my dad is short and bald, like Vizzini from The Princess Bride. Growing up, friends would often ask him to saying things like, "I'm waiting" and such from the movie. He does a fine impression of Vizzini's death scene. Maybe I'll have to get that on video sometime and put it here..."for posterity". I know, I know. Enough Princess Bride. I'm almost done with the book so then I can get on to something else.

Silly Day

We're still on the random stuff. Evan pulled Maren around in the laundry basket the other day. She looked like the Queen of Sheba. She was loving it and so was he.

And here is the beginning of Evan's photography portfolio. He did get some more "normal" pictures of Michael, but this one really shows Michael's personality, now doesn't it? And he loves to take feet pictures. I love his little polka dot feet from his Crocs. His picture of Michael is probably more clear than about 75% of the pictures I take. Ha!

Okay, then. I'm a big dork. Scroll down. See the post down four below? That was supposed to be at the top here. The Random Randomness one. Yeah. How do people do that? You've got to think backwards. I was supposed to post that one last since it was the title of all the random posts. Oh well. I tried to rearrange them but it looks like I would have to delete and start over. No way, Jose! And I still have a couple more posts for this random topic. However, I told myself I was going to go get in bed at 12:30 so I could read some more Princess Bride. I know, I know. Still working on it. If I didn't have kids and have to work until all hours of the morning, I would've had it read in just a couple of days. Reading a book five pages per day is so frustrating. I just want to dig in and get it done, but by about 2 a.m., I'm too wiped out. I've got to put it down. Anyway, I'll get the other stuff on tomorrow.

Okay, so my sister, Danica, threw a Funny Party. Basically you dressed up funny, talked in silly voices, made homemade pizzas tied with our wrists tied to someone else's, we told jokes, got silly gag gifts. It was a great time. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Michael. Picture this. He had a pair of brown leather pants on that his mom got him a couple of years ago and we have been saving for an occasion such as this. Then a Hawaiian shirt with the top button unbuttoned as to reveal some of his hairy chest, and one of my gold chains. Then he added "a tablespoon of gel" to his hair and slicked it back. He talked in a silly, high-pitched Mexican accent. It was quite hysterical. Anyway, he tired of being tied to me for making our pizza. So he did it on his own. It looked quite lovely (see pizza on the left). I decided to make my own. Being the culinary dunce I am, I attempted to roll my dough out onto the table. Then instead of putting it onto the baking sheet before topping it, I added the sauce and cheese. Michael caught me in the act and said, "I'd like to videotape you trying to get that off the table and onto the sheet now." Well, he was absolutely right. With my stuff already on it, it was quite difficult. The resulting pizza is shown on the right. Just wanted to document the difference in our culinary expertise.

Maren's absolute happiest time of day is right when she wakes up in the morning. And the rest of us just love it! Everyone races to her room to see who can get to that chubby cuteness first. It's usually Evan! She'll stay in there for 5 or 10 minutes just talking to us through the bars, laughing, rolling around. So cute. So we decided to document her cuteness one morning. Did I have to put two pictures her? Sure didn't. But I couldn't chose between the two, so here they are.

Next up is Mr. Evan. For some unknown reason Maren's bath seat (hammock kind of chair thing) was in the living room. Am I the only person this happens to? Why do we have bath seats in the living room and baby biter biscuits in the bathroom? Why are my church clothes on Evan's bookshelf and, well, I was looking around for my next example but there are too many to chose from. I'll leave it there. Anyway, Evan plopped himself in it, wrapped up in a blanket and declared himself bored. Poor guy. I'd like to be bored. Ever. It was a funny moment. Had to save it here.

Can I Do Random Randomness Again?

Well, over the last week I've been trying to get some good pictures of the kids. I've been inspired by friends (Jen!) taking fancified pictures and have been trying to recreate the same at home. It's not working! In the meantime, we've caught some cute moments and some pictures I just want to save on here. So, here's all the random stuff for this week:

First, this was me trying, again, to be fancy. I've seen all these great shots of kids with their heads "chopped" off and fun angles. Didn't work so well here. The cluttered background looks, well, gross. And do you have to have a $500 lens to get it to focus that close or something? Just wasn't working with our camera. Or maybe I wasn't correctly working with it. Hmm...

Oh, to be so terribly poor!

(DISCLAIMER: This post is just for me. I don't want anyone thinking I'm saying all this because I want to see a cute little girly outfit in my mailbox in the next week. This is for me to read years down the road when I can laugh about it...hopefully!)

It was an excruciatingly painful day to be so very poor! The kids and I went to Fred Meyer to get some of the basics...milk, cheese, bread. You know. Well, Freddy's was having a big sale on clothes. I walked into this Carter's wonderland of baby girl clothes that were SOOO cute! I kept picking up outfit after adorable outfit, holding it up high so Evan could see it, and saying, "wouldn't Maren look so cute in this, Evan?" I'm sure he thought I was nuts, but he played along by telling me they would look cute on her. And the thing is that all the clothes were at least 50% off. We're talking Carter's jammies for $9. That's a steal! Now, in my former life when I worked at Unum, I might've picked up four of them without even thinking. Money really wasn't an issue. Oh, sometimes I long for that feeling that if there is something we need, I could just grab it. Anyway, I had to tear myself away. $9 might as well be $900 right now. Then we got into the women's sale racks. Again, all these beautiful, amazing clothes for 50% off or more! I was envisioning myself on a Sunday morning NOT running around like a crazy woman trying to find something to wear that isn't there. That's how it's been the last couple of months. I just don't have much of anything to wear. And if I thought church was bad, the other six days of the week are worse. Now, granted, my sister-in-law did give me two bags of clothes that I need to go through and try on. However, I have hopes of fitting into about a quarter of the things she gave me and some of them date back as far as probably 10 years. I know I'm no longer the hippest chick on the block (I used to be! Remember, Lisa?), but I do have a little bit of pride. I can't be too outdated.

So, some days I really feel strongly about my gratitude. Grateful for my wonderful family. Grateful that Michael is going to school to have a career and bless our family. Grateful for all the amazing things that bless my life on a daily basis. And then there's days like these when I'm just tired of being poor and I just want to be able to buy something. Anything. A $9 pair of jammies. :-) Maybe next year. Or the year after. Or when the student loans are paid off. Everyone says that they have such happy memories of being poor, right? I'm anxious for the memories. Ha!

The Garden!

Where to start with the garden? Boy, probably 8 months ago Evan decided he wanted a garden. Michael's mom had sent him a book called Squarefoot Gardening...about maximizing what little space you may have to garden in. We decided it would be a great teaching tool for Evan. So that's when it all started. Now, if you know anything about Michael, his projects take months...sometimes years (think the master bathroom, if you know that story!). So here's the process of the garden. It started before these pictures started, but here's what I've got. At the beginning of June we've got Michael and Melissa mixing worm poop, chicken poop, vermiculite (what's that??), and all sorts of other things that I don't have a clue about in the garage. No actual dirt. Just strange things with long, silly names. My suggestion and Michael's mom's suggestion was that we do it outside by the garden boxes on a tarp so we wouldn't have to wheelbarrow it all to the back of the house. If you know anything about Michael, you also know that he is quite particular about how he does things and this is the way he thought would be best. This picture was taken exactly three months ago!

Once the "dirt" got all put in, it was a couple of months until he got all this other stuff rigged up. We've got the rope ladder thingy in the back for stuff to grow up here. This picture was taken three weeks ago.

And finally our finished product. This from last Friday. Because it took so long for him to get it done once the "dirt" got in, there was TONS of cat poop in it. So Evan and Michael scooped it out and put up a cat fence so they can't get in. It being Michael's project, it's a pretty cool. Both sides swing out so we can get in and water it. Then they swing back and hook around that bamboo post in the middle. For "Squarefoot Gardening", you also separate your boxes into squares. Hence the white dividers, which used to be pieces of our faux wood blinds.

And here is Evan with his morning watering (notice still in his jammies!). Everything has already started to sprout...peas, green onion, kale, cabbage, and spinach. Hopefully they will all make it. As everyone likes to point out..."the season is kind of over". That is true Michael Bybee fashion. I'm excited for all the yummy fruits of next Summer. Yum. And now that that project is done, he can get back to that pesky bathroom. You know, it's only been five years and my birthday IS next month!! (Remind me...don't hold my breath. Ha!)

Paragraph, anyone?

What does Blogger have against paragraphs? Why won't it put a double space between my paragraphs like I type it in? I don't understand. It's making me crazy. It makes me look like I don't like to make paragraphs. Just one big paragraph that runs on and on and on. Hmm...

Oh! In other news, I am reading The Princess Bride for the first time. Of course, like everyone, I have loved the movie for may years and can recite most of it. Dork! My brother has been telling me to read the book for years and I'm now into it. All I have to say is that the author must've been on drugs. Ha! His whole Morgenstern story and all of the other crazy stuff he made up and the wild and crazy parentheses all over the place...it just cracks me up. A little strange, but amusing nonetheless. If you have no idea what I'm talking about and you love the movie, pick up the book (free at your local library!). You, too, can find yourself shaking your head in disbelief and bewilderment.

Ward Campout!

First off, obviously I just can't get happy with the colors on my blog here. Some people have the coolest colors that I just can't find on here. Oh well. One day I'll figure this out (including video, I hope!!). Second, I must say that this post is going to be very frustrating for me. Our ward campout was this weekend. Our camera batteries were dead so before we left I opened up a new package of batteries (granted, they were from the dollar store, but still Panasonic), threw them in, and off we went. When I went to take my first to-die-for-cute picture of one of the kids, the camera said the batteries needed to be changed. So, I got NO pictures of a whole lot of cute moments that I'll just have to write about now. What's worse is that the mouse batteries were just dying so I decided to try out the ones I had in the camera. You guessed it. They work beautifully! I'll bet I had them in the camera wrong or something. Ugh. If I could only go back in time...

Friday night Evan had been wanting to say he wanted to take a walk in the forest. He loves talking about "the forest", though it's not like we ever really go to "the forest". I think it's just from books or something. Anyway, being that it was, like, 10:30 p.m. at the time, I told him we could go in the morning. Evan had finally gotten to sleep at 12:15 a.m. after about 30 minutes of screaming that he wanted to go home. He and Michael shared a twin-size air mattress and pillow. And then Evan woke up at 7:00 a.m. Hello! If 7 hours of sleep isn't enough for an adult, son, you've got some serious sleep debt now! That's what I wanted to tell him. Of course, I bribed, cajoled, and everything else I could think of to get him to go to sleep, but to no avail. So, by the time we got back to our campsite after a delicious breakfast with the rest of the ward, Maren was ready for a nap and so was Michael (he didn't sleep very well the night before...I'm sure you can figure that one out). Just then his 4-year-old friend Emma came from the campsite next door, I mean bush, to ask Evan if he wanted to play in the forest. Eureka! I didn't have to worry about Evan waking Michael up. But I did have to worry about Evan in the forest so I had to tag along on their little adventure. Well, they had a blast getting caught in "traps" and using their magical moss or stick or fig newton to help get the other one freed. If Emma jumped down from a log, Evan wanted to jump off of it, too. And when I offered to help him jump, since I was fairly certain he was going to crack his head open, he said he wanted to do it himself. I'm sure he was trying to impress Emma by being big, too. Nature and I have never been the closest companions so I made sure to 'keep a sharp eye' out for snakes and other critters since there were holes and caves everywhere! After about 45 minutes of contorting my body through some of the crazy brush they wanted to walk through, I was thrilled when it was over. Sure was cute to watch them using their imaginations, though, and playing so nicely together. Those two traipsing together would've made a cute picture.

Then there was Maren at the beach. I was holding her in the Baby Bjorn for about 30 minutes while Evan and Michael played in the sand before Michael asked me why I didn't just put her down in the sand. I'll tell you why! Some moms are so calm, cool and collected about sand everywhere, their kids eating sand, their kids getting dirty and having to clean them off. Not me. Maybe this just goes along with the nature phobia (not really! But it sounded good.). Anyway, I decided to stop being a scrooge and put her down in the sand. Oh, was she cute! She kicked her little feet in it and would scoop of big fists full of sand. Of course, she did try to eat it a number of times, but she survived. That would've been a priceless picture.

Just having our family together...out of the house...relaxing... That would've been a priceless picture.

Now we're home and back to reality, but happily Michael doesn't have school until Thursday this week, so that is marvelous! Some Evan funnies: sometimes Michael says "I'm a genius" when he figures out something that is nearly impossible to figure out or he comes up with a solution to something that would take me years to come up with. It's pretty cute. Well, yesterday Evan used it, too. I'm not sure what he had done that was so ingenious, but he gave himself the label. It will be funny to see what instances this pops up in later. Lastly, before Maren was born, we went to Build-A-Bear and he put a bear together for her. He put in a button you put in the paw that says "I love you" when you push it. Well, he and Michael were playing with it this morning and Evan was reminiscing about our trip to Build-A-Bear and he was talking about the "I love you" button and he said, "Dad, is there electricity in there?" I just about fell back off my seat. First of all, how does he know about electricity? Do kids learn stuff by osmosis? Sometimes I wonder. Second, what a genius deduction. :-) I guess he was right about the label. Heehee. Michael went on to explain that it has a battery, it creates electricity, etc.

(This is getting to be a very long post and I feel guilty doing long posts without a picture, but I must remember that this is for me! So, I will go on with...) Maren: things are changing with that girl. She's gone from eating the number 1 baby foods to pancakes out of desperation at the ward campout (oh, yes. Another picture!). I don't think she wants to go back to the "baby" food anymore. She's been giving me growls today about the food I'm giving her. I'll bet I wouldn't hear the same thing if she got a pancake. I started giving her Cheerios last week. The first day she really couldn't pick them up very well. Most of them I would end up putting in her mouth. By day two, she had the grasp down pat. She can shovel them in so fast now, that I'm constantly on the alert, lest she choke. In the last couple of days she has started to try to inch on her tummy like a worm. Each day she gets better and better. Of course, she's only probably made it 6" so far, but at the rate things are changing around here, she's going to be crawling around soon. Guess that means it's time to vacuum...