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...

Miscellaneous Mumbo Jumbo

Ha! This picture kills me. Here is Evan with some of Anton's spy gear. I asked Michael if he told Evan to make a "serious guy" face. Nope! All on his own accord. Looks very threatening.

Through the summer reading program at the library, kids who read (or were read to) for 15 hours got a prize of going to Oaks Amusement Park one afternoon. Since it is hard to have much fun on our budget, we decided it would be great for Evan. Here is his first "real" ride. He was steering his steering wheel and waving as he passed us each time. I told Michael he is definitely ready for Disneyland now. The second thing he rode was some rockets that go up and down. He was Mr. Stoneface. Wouldn't even give us a sideways glance. He was too cool for his britches. Then he said he wanted to go on this roller coaster which we were sure he would be too short for and which he most certainly would chicken out of anyway. When we went up to the height thing, we found that he wasn't too short, miraculously. Of course, I volunteered to be the one to take him on the ride (thanks, Michael!) but I was still sure that as we had to wait for about 5 loads of people to get on and off and he saw them going around and around and up and down really fast and screaming that he would want to bail. Nope! He went on it! Unfortunately, Michael couldn't get a picture because it was going too fast and I put him on the inside of the ride to reduce his whiplash. :-)

I can't even believe I'm putting this picture on here. I look so gross! Anyway, Oaks Park has a skating rink. I was all nostalgic, picturing myself in junior high going skating with my friends to "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Pump Up the Volume". So, I thought Evan should give it a try. He was all gung-ho about putting the skates on but had a rather difficult time getting the hang of it. It took us about 3 minutes to get to the actual rink when we decided it was time to go for the real thing. About 10 feet into it he decided he'd had enough. Truthfully, so had I. With having to hold him up, keep myself on my feet, and balance both of us at the same time, I would've had to have years of physical therapy and massage to fix the problems I would've had if we had even gone around once. But, the idea was fun anyway.

This is Evan and Jaren playing today in our (itty bitty!) sand box. They love it. It's about the one thing they can do together and not fight. I forgot to mention last night that Evan is all about doing things by himself lately. He gets all his clothes on (although yesterday he wanted everything backwards. His underwear didn't look too comfy that way and it looked like his head was turned 180 degrees because of his pants and shirt. He pours the milk into his cups and his cereal bowl. Surprisingly, we've had very few accidents with that. He's becoming Mr. Independent. It's good and bad, but most times very cute.

50 Things List

For those of you who are confused, and a couple of you have already said that you are, my 50 Things List only has about five items right now. That's because I haven't finished it. Hopefully some day I'll have some time to get working on that. I did see that PCC has violin lessons for $69. Really good deal, but it will still have to wait for another year.

Kids Update

Just thought I'd put a little note in here about what's new with the kids. That way in ten years I can remember some of these sweet things that were happening in our little house with little kids.

Evan: He is really using his imagination lately. We can frequently hear him having little dialogues with the things he is playing with or nothing at all. People call him on his phone all the time (maybe even you!) and he asks, 'are you going to come to our house today?' Sometimes he tells them he is on the train but he'll stop by anyway. One of the "grown-up" words we like lately that he has acquired is "actually". It's just so cute to hear his little 2-year-old voice use that word correctly. Speaking of talking, he won't stop. He talks and talks and talks all day. There isn't a word he doesn't know, I'm pretty sure. :-) Since the second day of being potty trained, he hasn't had an accident. Whew! One day we were waiting 45 minutes at the MAX station to pick Michael up and he really had to go pee. Just then Michael got there and I told Michael he would have to help Evan find a bush. Well, Evan thought that was the coolest thing ever so whenever he gets the chance to try to pee outside, he takes it. He keeps getting in trouble for it, but he goes out on a limb anyway. Even tried it right outside the church doors the other week! Um, he loves Nursery. Especially singing time, I think. He knows tons of songs. It always amazes me when I hear another one come out of his mouth that I had no clue he knows. Lastly, a funny conversation this morning. I was feeding Maren in her room. He was in the bathroom. E: I have a great idea! Me: Really? What is it? E: No, Mom. I was just talking to myself. Um, okay, I thought. Then he proceeded to share his great idea with himself. What a goof!

Maren: She is our rolly poly...for more reasons than one. First is that she has rolls all over her body. Her legs are especially rolly with the last count being five. Second is that she is rolling to get everywhere now. It is so fun. I'm not sure what happened to my baby, or where the time went, but life is getting really exciting with her. And she is so beautiful. I just want to eat her up sometimes. Of course she loves that. She absolutely adores Evan and will pretty much crack up over anything he does. We really have to work for a laugh! Hmm...I guess there's just not as much to say when you're not talking, talking all the time and saying funny things. I can't think of anything else about Maren right now. Pictures to come...

No Cable!

Well, we've been poor before, but never poor enough to have to give up our $9.63 cable. The only reasons we had it were for the twice-yearly church conference and the Discovery Channel. Well, we're poor enough now that $9.63 makes a difference. Ha! So, it's gone. Yikes! Not that it matters all that much. I definitely don't have time to watch TV right now and Michael would be better off studying. If something good is on Discovery, it's hard to convince him to do anything else (this is only after Evan is in bed). So, this will be a social experiment to see how we fare. I'm sure it will be fine. I have two shows that will start next month that I may die if I don't get to see. Happily, they are both on the Internet so I will have to try to figure out when I can watch those. I think Evan will survive, too. His average is only half an hour a day anyway. I told him we can pick up some special DVDs from the library for those times when we just need to watch a show. So, for those of you who thought we were crazy for not having Dish and DVR and the like, now what do you think? Heehee.

Help me!

I need help...obviously. My blog needed a face lift. I needed some new, bright colors to ward off the stress that has been filling my life lately. Then I decided to add this cute picture to the title bar. Whoops! What the heck is going on with that picture? How do I make it smaller? Someone please help!!!

Too long!

You know, when someone else hasn't made a post in this long I want to call them up and make sure they're still alive. I want new, fresh info. Ha! Life has just been CRAZY BUSY! If you saw our house, you'd be instantly convinced. Poor Evan...he just needs a clean sippy cup is all. Anyway I have a couple cute stories and pictures to post. Hopefully there will be time tomorrow somewhere in between my 8 hours of work that I need to get finished. In the meantime, I'm trying to work on a list of 50 things I'd like to do or accomplish in my lifetime. I saw this ingenious idea on some other blogs (thanks, Darilyn!) and I love the idea. I like to dream and then make things happen. Hopefully this will help.