Lael's nail fettish

These photos were taken Sunday while we hung out at Erik's parents house for dinner. You can see Lael showing off her nails in several of them. Lael has been slightly obsessed with polishing her nails lately, which has led to no end to troubles, the latest of which was when she left her new blue nail polish on the toilet and Henry used it to paint the toilet and his face (although I don't think he ate any - he's still alive at any rate). He's a fast little bugger and that was no fun to clean up. And of course it happened Saturday right before our friends came over. Lael transports it with her, like lip gloss. We've been at a friend's house and I'll be thinking, "What's that smell? That smells familiar. Lael!" because she's decided to pull fingernail polish out of her pocket and paint her nails in the middle of someone else's kitchen. Obviously I should have waited til she had a little more sense to introduce her to nail polish. But I knew she would love it and I pulled it out as a reward one day. You can be I've lived to regret that day already. I haven't even told you the kicker yet. Remember Ryan, of the hair-cutting fame? Well, while Oliver and Lael were spending the weekend there a few weeks ago. Ryan's mom was taking a bath and looked down at her feet and was dismayed to see her nails had turned shiny and slightly yellow. So she did a google search to find out what could possibly be wrong with her. She was commenting on it when she noticed Ryan was snickering. Turns out Ryan and Lael snuck into her room while she was sleeping and painted her toenails. Lael assures me they massaged Ryan's mom's feet to keep her asleep. Also, Lael claims she really had no part. She just watched, which might be true, but still! We introduced Ryan to nail polish at Lael's birthday party in February and it was Lael's nail polish they were using. I apologize if I got any of the details of that story incorrect but as you can see, introducing Lael to nail polish has had far-reaching consequences, and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of them.

blogging in 90 seconds

Got no time. Giving myself 90 seconds to write this blog. At home while Henry naps and the rest of em are at Oliver's baseball game. Hoping he doesn't strike out all game again. It's kid pitch now and the last game was pretty sad for him, though he takes it well and still wants to go back. Got posters for Spirit Day next week to design, fliers for signups for Relief Society tomorrow morning to make, phone calls to set up meals for babies and funerals, chapel to clean. This all has to get done now before A's game to go to this afternoon. Friends coming for dinner. Forgot it was Passover and we shouldn't serve bread until they reminded us. Kind of a fun challenge but one I haven't thought of for awhile. Glad they practice Reform Judaism so we don't have to remove all leavened products from the house, though! As usual, way too much stuff planned for one day but I guess that's the fun of it. OK, so it's actually taken me 3 minutes to write this because I'm a copy editor and can't leave things alone. Maybe I should go jump on the tramp for 90 seconds while no one's home before I dive in to all this work. See ya!

Jump! Jump! Jump!

We finally did it! We bought a jumping hazard. It looks more like a large spaceship has landed in our backyard and it took us all weekend to set it up, but we finally have a trampoline. There are plenty available on Craiglist, but of course those weren't good enough. When I started looking into them, I couldn't stand the thought of the kids jumping without a net. Plus, we will have it for a long time so I wanted it to be a good one and to last. And when I saw the spring-free trampoline at Costco, I knew it was THE ONE. So I've been selling stuff via Craigslist and I've earned half of it but they were $150 off last week so I went ahead and bought it. I have to keep selling stuff, which is a pain, but it is so nice to have it gone. And the kids love it and it will be great for this summer, even if it does take up a large part of the yard.

So I listened to Elder Ballard's talk, really I did. I just haven't figured out how to apply it to my life yet apparently. I admit to being a bit confused as to how I am supposed to not do too many fun activities like book club and scrapbooking (which I would like to do more of) and then how I am supposed to pick one or two things I enjoy and do those (cause really that's more than I do right now anyway). I guess for me just having a baby is very overwhelming so I have hardly scrapbooked at all for a year. Heck, I didn't even get Christmas cards out. I end up dropping everything but what is most important, which I guess would be taking care of the kids and I do like to travel. But if I could drop one thing, it would definitely be the insane amounts of homework, and since that really isn't an option, I end up living an insane life. Anyway, I heard the talk and yet somehow I found myself waltzing into the Booster Club (PTA) meeting Thursday night (OK, so maybe it was more of a hobble because it involved getting out of Lael's T-ball game and meeting Erik at a Pump It Up birthday party to drop off the kids while fending off a cough and sore throat) and volunteering to single-handedly do the school's web site. Oh, and throwing my hat into the ring for president next year. It's a small ring. Only the principal, president, one board member and one teacher were at the meeting. There are a handful of moms who have been running everything and most of their kids are moving up to middle school next year and the ones left are burned out. I guess I just couldn't resist the power void. I would like to see big changes, which I will have to blog about at a future time. But it needs to start with parent involvement. And that can only happen if there is communication, which isn't happening right now - hence the web site. I would like to get parents to commit to being involved in one activity a year and to volunteer to donate 5 hours a year to it. And it would be great if they could sign up online. And if the summaries of the meetings and reminders of upcoming events were sent out by email. I plan to set up a google group. There is a yahoo group currently, but there are only 17 members, which just isn't doing it. So, I've obviously got my work cut out for me. But it isn't lost on me that Erik is employed at Adobe, because I'm using the Adobe Dreamweaver software to get the job done. So right now I'm knee-deep in the user guide, since I really have no idea what I'm doing but since there's no one else to do it, I'm going to have to. I did do one html web page in college when the Internet was becoming mainstream but sadly that is the extent of my experience. So I'll be burning the midnight oil to get this project done.

When it rains it pours, I guess. I haven't had to do much for my compassionate service calling the past couple months and this week I get to arrange meals for a surgery, a funeral and a baby all at once. Woohoo. Also today, I have been trying to get the info to get our property value reassessed since we are paying taxes on about $50,000 more than we could get for the house if we did sell it (and our taxes are $6,000 a year, so it will make a significant difference). Tonight after Family Home Evnening Erik has to finish our income taxes. He's got a release coming up so he had to work Saturday and he will be working a lot for the next month. The only reason I'm even blogging right now is because Lael's T-ball practice just got cancelled (Thank you! But it's because her coach, who is a college student, has a paper due. Hmmm. Doubt she'd accept that excuse from me but whatever! I'm not complaining). Well, I'd better get back to Dreamweaver: The Lost Guide. Oh ya, and the kids. And then there's dinner ...

Adios Aloha and ATA

Well, my dreams of going to Hawaii on a lark with Erik next year have been dashed. With the demise of Aloha and ATA airlines this week, airfare to Hawaii is expected to rise. And I highly doubt we'll be able to do what a couple friends did a few weeks ago and fly roundtrip for 3 nights with hotel for $450. I used to watch the super low fares every spring and dream of hopping off the mainland for a few days. It's a 5 hour flight from here. I'm sure we'll still make it to Kauai sometime but probably not as soon or as inexpensively as I'd planned. Oh well. I am very glad right now that we did go over Thanksgiving for our 10-year anniversary, even if we did take the family. I was able to fly all of us including Sky, for just under $2,000. I guess that won't be happening again so I'm very glad we did it when we did.

Now onto my soapbox. I watched the TV news coverage of the event last night and I was reminded why I despise TV news. I wasted 3.5 minutes of my life on the segment where all they covered were the disappointed ATA would-be passengers that showed up for flights yesterday morning and found out they held tickets for nothing. They talked about which airlines would theoretically honor the tickets (Why should they? They still need to make money so they don't go out of business. And I say theoretically because of course there aren't any seats left). I feel bad for these stranded people, but the effects are much more far-reaching. They did say those who purchased tickets more than 60 days ago are SOL. Those who used their credit cards within the past 60 days can probably get a refund. But what about all the employees? I haven't heard anything about them. Will this have an effect on our local economy? What about general prices for Hawaiian fares? Today's newspaper picked up on this story and said they would be going up, but none of this was covered in last night's newscast. You get my point. When I worked for the newspaper, I had access to AP and other news wires and I would see the differences between the stories the newspapers chose to run and what was covered on the TV news. I found it disgusting that the TV news would only give good coverage to those items they could get interesting footage of. If there wasn't video or at least a picture attached, it got relegated to a brief clip. Newspapers do this a little, giving prominent play to items with photos attached, but not as badly. But what I dislike the most is that anytime I actually know something about a subject that is covered on a TV newscast, I find they are full of crap. Just like how in last night's broadcast they mentioned each of the airline's ticket honoring policies and had worked up a graphic for it when in reality, every airline that is running flights to Hawaii is now overbooked and the other airlines don't matter to the affected passengers, so the information was essentially irrelevant. And yet someone watches this stuff or they wouldn't keep spewing it out, but I can hardly stand to watch it anymore. Sometimes I feel like a traitor to my journalism degree that I rarely read newspapers either, but I get my news from online and I occasionally watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I'm sure I'll watch it more in the near future because their election coverage is highly entertaining. So that's it. There's my 10 cents. You can take it for what it's worth.

Spring has sprung

March is my favorite month of the year. It helps that it's my birthday month, but mostly I love the shocking green color that springs up on the hills of the San Francisco Bay Area this time of year. And when I was in Israel, Spring only lasted a couple weeks, but it was beautiful. I like hiking, and we haven't done much of it with the kids, but I couldn't let the season go by without going up in the hills. We ended up hiking in the regional park near our house. Sometimes when I'm up in the hills in spring, it feels like what I imagine Ireland is like. Anyway, I think the Mission Peak hike is a few years down the road but it's fun going on short hikes for now.













We took Henry on his first bike ride. I love our Kettrike bike we bought Oliver when he was little. Henry loves going around the block. He is quite the adventurer already.









I loved Lael in this Easter outfit - she added the boots, which made it very her. It's a little large on her because that's the only way I can justify buying her more clothes is to buy big. Her favorite dresses are the nicer (usually Gymboree) ones I have bought her that are made of silk. But then she'll try to wear her tennis shoes or add some other random feature, which I usually don't let her get away with, so it leads to another battle. One week I fought her all week to wear her tennis shoes and she refused (she even played soccer in her cowgirl boots, probably just to spite me - who knows?) and then she tried to wear her tennis shoes on Sunday. She can be difficult like that. Anyway, she goes to church a lot looking half dressed for the opera but with wild bush hair and cowgirl boots. That's Lael for ya!







Oliver did a great job at his Grand Author's Night at school. He got to read the book he wrote about a dog and a mantaray.

Sorry I haven't posted in so long - I got locked out of my account and we've been beyond busy, as usual. I'm really frustrated with the publishing options I have with this blog layout, but I'd rather get some sleep than have the perfect blog, so I'm just going to post it and go to bed. Sorry the layout is so bad!

Viva Las Vegas!

We killed it - as my brothers and I used to say when we would finally complete a video game (which was only Super Mario Bros for me during one Christmas break). Spring break in Vegas was awesome! We did everything we set out to do. We saw shows, ate great food, went swimming in fabulous pools every day, hiked on red rock and played with cousins. Of course, we trekked through lots of casinos, but our kids are troopers when it comes to walking around. I will admit we exceeded our yearly dose of cigarette smoke (the older casinos like Circus Circus are the worst) but there were definitely less people smoking this time and ventilation technology in the newer casinos is vastly improved. We couldn't have survived without our humidifier that we run at night but my feet still dried out and my heels got cracks so I was grateful for the hot tip I got about using superglue to glue my heels together (no, not to each other, silly). It worked great! (If you do this, just remember to get some fingernail polish remover to take the superglue off in a few weeks.) Anyway, this first picture is what I love about Vegas - it's posh and overdone on such a grand scale that you have to see it to believe it. And some of the best parts of Vegas are free! The Bellagio fountains are my favorite feature, so we caught several shows. These photos were taken outside Paris, and as Jordan put it, "Lael, everything in this town is fake!" But Vegas does it even better than Disney. We went to see Monty Python's Spamalot and it was hilarious. Even Joni was only slightly offended. John O'Hurley's comedic timing can't be beat. We also took the kiddies to the Mac King Comedy Show and saw Terry Fator (the America's Got Talent winner). We did the Shark Reef experience at Mandalay Bay and had breakfast at Le Village buffet in Paris and we even had enough time to drag the kids out to Red Rock Canyon to hike around. We went to the Fremont Street experience and even made it to see the Las Vegas Temple on Sunday. But my favorite part (besides Spamalot) was swimming in the lazy river at our timeshare with my family. I didn't have a camera handy to capture two priceless moments - one with Henry and Oliver playing in the zero entry pool at dusk (a beautiful time of day in the desert when the lights are coming on) and Erik and Lael waltzing in the lazy river. I guess I just have to keep those memories as photos in my mind. But those are the moments that make all the planning and packing and stress and traveling and unpacking worth it. We are probably going to take a break and come back to do Las Vegas for spring break in 2010, so let us know if you want to join us. They are building like crazy so there are always new fabulous casinos and places to see, and we still haven't been to a Cirque du Soliel show and Erik wants to see Penn and Teller. So if you don't think Las Vegas is family friendly, come do it with us!

It's hard to describe the level of insanity my life routinely operates on, but just for your amusement, I'll attempt to summarize the past 24 hours. Yesterday at 4:30 pm, while I was missing our dentist appointments and was instead trying to finish unpacking the car, I got a call that said Lael was missing T-ball practice (more on that topic later). So I took her to baseball practice, ran to the grocery store with all the kids (something I try hard never to do, but we just got back into town) and got a call at 6:30 from Erik saying he had lost his wallet on BART, so I had to immediately cancel all the credit cards. Then Erik came home and finished making dinner and worked on the toilet (since Lael accidentally flushed a cleaning head down it the other day it hasn't worked so well) and called Comcast to figure out the password for our message service, which we haven't been able to access for two weeks. After we got the kids fed and to bed, I had to pay the bills since lots were due because it was the first of the month. This morning I took Oliver to the chiropractor's since his neck was hurting and he has been complaining about his leg and I've been meaning to go anyway- he checked out fine. My neck was so kinked from the drive to and from Las Vegas I needed to go anyway. Then we went late to Henry's Little Gym class and after that I checked Oliver into school and came home and had lunch and wrote Sarah her email and then went to yoga with friends and picked Oliver up from school. Whew! That was a crazy 24 hours. Things don't always go at quite that speed, but I'd say it's like that at least once a month and it definitely takes days to recover. And I have at least one crazy, nonstop day a week.

So, on to T-ball: Lael's coach is the aunt of two of the boys on her team and let's just say our philosophies of what T-ball should be don't match. She is taking it so seriously that she wants them to practice twice a week in addition to their two games. I'm going to have to tell her we will only be making it to one practice a week. And since we're already so popular with this coach, I might just tell her that we don't have anything scheduled, I just feel it is an unnecessary use of our family time. I've left out lots of details of the interactions that have gone badly with this team. At this point, I have been labeled an absent, slacker parent. One day when I was talking to the other moms, I noticed none of them were making eye contact with me and I realized they had been talking about me when I wasn't there. It's been an interesting experience to be the hated mom. I've never been there before. But I just keep acting cheery and everyone but the coach now talks to me like nothing bad has happened. Anyway, the saga continues ...