Happy, Happy Birthday, Mikey Dear!

It's Michael's birthday today and I was just writing him his birthday card (10:45 at night. Nice, huh? But I did LOTS of other stuff today for the occasion, in my defense!). I wrote, "When I met you, you were 23. Now you're 36! Wow! We really ARE growing old together!" Gee whiz, time flies. And what happened to Michael's 30s, anyway? They're more than half gone. When did we become such old farts (ha! Just kidding to all of you "older" friends of mine!!)? Sometimes I feel like I'm still 20 and he's still 23. When did the life of adults creep up on us with a house and kids and, uh, stress?!?! Oh, well. He's got a lot less hair now than he did back then, but that just saves on gel. And the great thing is that his glasses are much smaller than they were back in the day. But, Mikey, I love you more than I could've ever thought possible back when you were a wee lad of 23. Happy birthday, Love!

New Take on the Doggy Door!

So today we're driving home from taking Michael to work and Evan tells me he has a great idea. He wants to cut some of the wall out of his room in the shape of a square. Then he wants to put a square piece of paper over it. That way whenever he wants to go outside, he can just rip off the paper and go out through the hole in his bedroom wall. A ha! Of course! He wants a doggy door. But when I asked him where he had seen that before, he told me he'd never seen it. He just thought about it and thought it was a great idea. So, son, could you think of another great idea that hasn't already been invented and make your family financially stable?!?! :-) By the way, sorry, but no on the doggy door. Haven't you ever seen that America's Funniest Videos where the people record the raccoon coming in and out the doggy door in the middle of the night? I told Evan he'd wake up and have raccoons and squirrels laying on his bed with him!

Love It!

Okay, this is so perfectly stated. I feel like I'm always trying to make excuses for why I can't get enough done in a day. Whether it be to friends or strangers or Mr. Michael. Now I understand! It's so true...it takes 45 minutes to get done what it takes people not packing kids around 15 minutes to do! Can you believe the nerve of this "friend" who wrote in with the question? Good grief! Enjoy!

Say what?

In the last couple of days, the kids have said things that really astounded us. We'll start with the funny and end with the serious. On Saturday Maren and I dropped the boys off at Home Depot and drove to my mom's house to give her our coffee table. Maren didn't know we had put it in the trunk. She went into my mom's house and me and the table followed. I put the table down in my mom's family room. When Maren saw OUR table sitting in my mom's house, she was quite surprised and said, "What is going on around here?" Huh? I was sure I didn't hear that right so I checked with my mom who confirmed that's exactly what she said. We got a good laugh over that one.

Yesterday morning (Sunday), Michael was working on the talk he would give in Sacrament Meeting that afternoon. I was sitting on the other side of the wall from the computer where Michael was looking quite concentratingly (interesting word, eh?) at his notes. Evan walked up to him and said, "What's wrong, Dad?" Michael replied that nothing was wrong, he was just fine. Then Evan said, "No, what's wrong with your talk?" Michael told Evan that there were just so many things he wanted to say. He wanted to make sure to say the most important things but he was having a hard time choosing which ones were the most important. This is what Evan said... "Well, Dad, the most important things are that Jesus is real. And Jesus will come again. And everyone will be resurrected. And Joseph Smith told us not to smoke." Well, I must've had the hugest eyes ever as they filled up with sweet tears. It's amazing what kids know and understand these days. He was absolutely right. He had no idea what Michael was speaking about but it doesn't matter. Those things are the most important (at least the first three, for sure! I love how that fourth one is the "one of these things is not like the other". Cute.). Michael shared that in his talk and Evan got lots of comments from the adults afterwards on how it was nice of him to help with his dad's talk. Pretty sweet moments for this mom.

Well, guess what...

I'm pregnant! Ha! Feel free to discuss it now. :-) Didn't see what is living inside me, but whatever it is has a heartbeat so we're doing good. Four more weeks to ultrasound. Hooray!

Sweet Shower!

So, I've got to tell you about my sweet shower yesterday! You see, we have a hot water problem. I can never get the water hot through my whole shower. Or I can get it luke warm through my shower but never hot. My showers are pretty miserable. Well yesterday Michael washed his church shirt about an hour before I took my shower. On hot! I asked him what the heck he was thinking and he said it would actually help and that we should have nice hot water for the next hour. Okey dokey. So my ritual is that I turn the shower on to full heat, feel the water from the outside, turn it down to the appropriate temp. and then get in. So I turned it on and was feeling cold, cold, cold. I look away to check something out on the wall and suddenly the water is gone. When I turn to look back, I realize it's not hitting my hand anymore because the water pressure just dropped about 90%. The water is only FALLING out of the shower head. But, guess what! Sweet! It's hot! So I get in and make a note that there's only about ten drops falling per second. Hmm... I try to get wet but I keep having to back up. Back. Back. Right into the knobby thing that turns the water on and off. Well, that's gonna leave a bruise but at least now I'm getting wet. Wash my hair. Start to rinse my hair. And rinse. And rinse. It takes me about five minutes to actually get all the shampoo out of my hair. But you know what? The water is hot! I consider whether it would really be wise to put conditioner in my hair since it will take a while to get it rinsed out and I might run out of hot water from taking so long. But my hair needs it so I go for it. Ouch! Ran into that darn thing again. And I'm practically stepping on the drain. I wish the trickle would shoot out just a little bit more. The problem with the low water pressure is also that even though the water is hot, I still feel rather cold because most of the air in the shower is not being hit by this hot water and it's chilly in there. But I finally get my hair rinsed and decide it would be unwise to skip my body. So I take care of that. All in all, it was a difficult shower. Not all that fun and kind of painful. But it was sweet! You know why? The water was hot!

Salmonella Scare?

So, I have my first appointment tomorrow. 16 weeks along and my first appointment. Should be interesting. Have you Googled the V baby video yet? Hmm... Anyway, if you don't hear another thing from me about a baby and that little widget is gone from the sidebar there, you'll know that there has been no baby this whole time and I just need to lay off the ice cream. In that case, please don't mention it to me. :-)

But, about the salmonella...I was supposed to fill out this paperwork with questions like how many pregnancies have you had? Do you smoke? Do you drink? How much exercise do you get? Do you take prenatal vitamins? You know, all those things they want to know to make sure you're making healthy choices in your pregnancy. Well, then there's this list of foods it asks you if you've been eating. Such as raw fish (no way, Jose!), deli meat (haven't been in the mood lately) and some other things. But then I got found out! The Mexican cheese. Yeah, forgot about that one...that it goes in with the soft cheeses. I realized my yummy tacos at Don Chilitos probably had Mexican cheese on them. And I've been there three times since I got pregnant. And then the real killer. Any raw eggs? HELLO! I'm a cookie dough lover! I love the dough better than the cookies. And not just that...brownie batter, cake batter. Whatever is yummy and uncooked I love! And they all have eggs in them, of course. So, I haven't finished filling in the sheet yet because I'm not sure what to put without getting in trouble. The good news, however, is that I'm pretty sure I've been eating raw eggs in this kind of stuff since I was two or younger. So I think I'm immune to salmonella. Can you be immune to salmonella? I'll have to ask Michael. :-) Not sick now, never have been before. Yeah, I'll probably continue with the cookie dough habit. The lizard probably likes what comes through the umbilical cord when I do!