emagination

a wedding & a funeral

2012-01-10T11:26:00.001-08:00

Last month's adventures took us far and wide. We were able to go to Caitlin's wedding in the LA temple on Dec. 17. It was a beautiful wedding and a fun day. It was a warm day for December, so the rain didn't really put a damper on things, especially since the reception was in a tent. Melanie and Lael had a great time in their Italian plum-colored dresses and they even let me curl their hair. Oliver and Henry were very dismayed when they were told it was an all-day event and they weren't going to get to go swimming until the evening. We finally let Henry go swimming during the luncheon after most of the guests had left. The kids all finally did get to swim the next day. They even went in the main pool, which was heated but would have still been way to cold for me (it is December after all). Erik and I got to meet Caitlin's husband Kevin for the first time right after the wedding ceremony. He seems like a really nice guy (hippie hair and all) and hopefully we'll get to spend some time with them in the future. At the reception, the kids loved the candy table and decorating the car. I had forgotten the glass paint so we had to make due with ranch dressing and mini oreos, but we made it work, although when they drove away the car did smell faintly of salad. Caitlin had lots of friends from college who came out for the wedding so the house was very busy. Kevin and Caitlin came back to open gifts on Sunday. We had a nice, relaxing day on Sunday and ate way too much leftover wedding cheesecake (but it was so good it was hard to resist!). The Lamb's bishop came over and called Lynn to be the Relief Society President, which she seemed to take in stride. I think she'll be great at it. We hung around for one extra day so the kids could play with their cousin Melanie and Lael cried (very loudly) that she wanted to go back for the first hour and a half of the car ride home.

When we got back to the Bay Area, we spent lots of time with Ann, Rob, Neil and Allie, Carl and baby Nathaniel. We played a lot of Bang! and went to see a couple movies – Lael loved Tintin and I really enjoyed Mission: Impossible. Ann cooked fabulous meals and we were very well fed that week! We had a very nice Christmas Eve program where everyone got to participate and we opened all the gifts, since Carl and Allie were leaving first thing Christmas morning to go back to Maryland. It was nice to get to see them again and hopefully we'll get to see everyone in August when we have a Swanson family week at the beach scheduled in Oregon.

The morning we got back from LA, I found out that my Uncle Larry had passed away and after much agonizing, decided to go to his funeral in South Dakota. Erik had the week off, so I left him to fend with kids from Tuesday through Saturday and I flew in to Rapid City. My brother Dan drove from Ogden, UT and picked me up on the way. We had to stop by Michael's and pick up a display board and I had sent photos to the Walmart so we picked those up and then we drove the 3 hours to Pierre. We got to see lots of cousins we hadn't seen in decades. We were fed everywhere we went, so that was really nice. My dad arrived at 10:30 pm and I got the rest of the pictures from him and then was up until 1 am putting the pictures together on the display board with my cousin. Her 3-year-old helped by sticking her gum to the display board first thing, so I felt right at home. The next morning was the funeral. It was an unusually warm day for a South Dakota winter, although it was still cold to me! It was nice that the ground was frozen enough that my heels didn't sink at the cemetary. At any rate, it was a very nice service. My Dad gave a talk, we sang several songs and then it was open for anyone to share memories of Larry. His surviving siblings got up and Dan and I got up. Some of the things that were shared were: Uncle Larry was always extremely positive. He was diagnosed with lupus in his early 20s and was on prednisone most of his life, which ate away his teeth and hips, so he had lots of surgeries and fake parts. He had to deal with a lot of constant pain but he always tried to be upbeat. He really enjoyed the time he spent with us the first 8 years of my life when we lived in Iowa with him. He would always call me Emily Dubeen (since I am named after my Aunt Duveen). He told me about how he would drive his Camero with me in one arm and the other on the wheel. He liked his muscle cars. He lived with us in Utah during one of his hip replacement surgeries and Dan was his roommate. His car was pretty dead, so my Dad got him another car to drive back to Iowa. Dan eventually bought a Camero and he and Uncle Larry would talk about the repairs and modifications he could make on it and Uncle Larry really enjoyed that. He was in Utah for my wedding in 1997 and he die cut all my invitations so there was a place for my photo to slide into (he worked in the printing business) and I was glad he was able to be at my wedding. In 2005, he came out to California to visit us and we took him on what was his last camping trip. We got him a cot and put an air mattress on top. He enjoyed being outdoors but I know that trip was tough for him physically. But he was a trooper and didn't complain. After he visited us, he had his leg amputated and after that his mobility decreased and he went back and forth between the rehabilitation center and the hospital. He always talked about what he would do when he got out. The last time I saw him was at the South Dakota reunion in 2007. I would talk to him a couple times a year and tried to remember Christmas and his birthday, which is the same as Henry's - June 10. He always remembered people's birthdays and other dates and although he wasn't able to have kids of his own, he truly enjoyed his nieces and nephews. He loved to make people, especially kids, laugh. Even though I'm glad he's not in pain anymore, I wish I could have done more for him and I do miss him.

I got to spend time with my cousin KD, who I haven't spent hardly any time with in the past 20 years. But it was fun to be together again. She is the only cousin I have who is my age. She is the youngest child of the oldest brother and I am the oldest child of the youngest brother. I look a lot like her family and it was funny when we stopped to get fast food, the cashier asked us if we were twins. We used to get asked that all the time but I had forgotten. She has 5 kids and works full time but was willing to take a day off work to spend with me. We went Goodwill shopping and I bought things like bolo ties and other Western wear, so it was fun. We have been trying to get back since the reunion and we are planning to go back out to South Dakota in the summer of 2013.

I flew back into Oakland New Year's Eve and we went to the City to see the lights and eat at McDonald's. There is now a law in San Francisco that says a child's meal cannot be offered with a toy. So McDonald's did an end-run around the law and is offering the toy for purchase for 10 cents extra that is donated to the Ronald McDonald House. McDonald's is paying me for my opinion about how my children are affected by this law, but it meant we had to eat out at an SF McDonald's. Since the toy is still offered separately, it wasn't any different to the kids, since I just asked them if they wanted it or not. McDonald's also has had to cut down the fries and add apples to meet nutrition requirements. Oliver of course won't eat the apples, but it's a good thing they get less fries. At any rate, the weather was perfect. We walked around and then ate in the very narrow, overcrowded restaurant on Market Street, walked back to our car and went to our friend's house in El Cerrito where we played Bang! and ate Silk Fudge from South Dakota until midnight.

And we've been recovering from everything since then! At any rate, it looks like we've got more weddings coming up, starting with Emily's sister Sarah's wedding in Utah on March 24, so it should be an exciting Spring! Hope you all survived your holidays.

Emily

2011-12-04T20:29:00.001-08:00

Joyful Jiggles:Bright Red Flat Holiday Photo Cards
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World Series Champions!

2010-11-15T13:46:00.001-08:00

Erik and I took Oliver and Lael to the Giants Tickertape Victory Parade in San Francisco. Yes, it was crazy. But it was a Wednesday, which was the kids' early day, so they only played hooky from school for 3 hours. The picture to the right was the view we had. There were tons (hundreds of thousands) of people there at Civic Center. We saw the cable cars go by with the names of the players on top. We put the kids on our shoulders so they could see the players inside the cable cars. We then braved the crowd milling about in front of City Hall and bought a pin and pennant and left to make our 2 pm dentist appointments. The BART system was overloaded and we had to go down a station and get lucky, but we made it to our dentist appointments in Sunnyvale only 20 minutes late. It was an experience at any rate! But we were glad we left Henry with a friend. We didn't know if they would ever get the chance again so we had to do it!

We have kittens!

2010-11-15T12:35:00.001-08:00

We have now officially adopted two kittens! Our best pets so far (Mr. Bunny & Lulu) have all been rescue pets, so I'm hoping our trend holds. These kittens were born in a driveway in our neighborhood. Their mom turned up dead in the driveway a couple weeks later, so a friend took them in and found a home for Smudge, the black and white girl kitten. We kept the other girl and boy and at FHE last week, we decided on the names Tinkerbell and Pan. They are now 7 weeks old and very cute tabby cats. Thankfully they are very smart and figured out the litterbox immediately. They sleep with Lael and the kids are loving it right now. The kittens even get along with Lulu. I am hoping for two things out of these cats: That they catch mice (please!) and that they keep Lulu company. If they can do those things, then they will be worth the things I'm sure they will destroy. At any rate, I think 5 people, 1 dog and 2 cats in 925 square feet is quite a full house!

First Ski Lessons

2010-02-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

Oliver and Lael finally had their first ski lessons at the Grandlibakken Resort in Tahoe. The price was right: $50 for the equipment rental, hour lesson and all-day tow rope lift pass. They did really well in their lesson but afterward they promptly shed their skis and went for the sledding hill, where they spent the rest of the day. They had a great time. Erik took his first snowboarding lesson and hardly got up and I took a ski lesson since it had been like a decade since I've been and didn't fall once, although it means I didn't do anything exciting either. So that was our snow trip for the year it looks like. Next year: Utah!

Missing Grandma Pugh

2009-09-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

I loved my Grandma Pugh. My family would often go over to her house Sunday evenings, where we always celebrated the holidays. She loved to decorate for them. She was an expert seamstress and kept an immaculate house. She was a talented artist who was willing to share her talents with others. She studied with several famous artists but she was also willing to give art lessons to local children and to donate a painting to raise money for a good cause. She died last week at Age 80 of complications from heart surgery. I wish she could have finished the piece she was working on. It was a portrait of a little Chinese girl with a handkerchief. She mostly did watercolors, and had started working with oils the past couple years. I was really looking forward to seeing what she would do with the portraits. Grandma Pugh was always thinking about what book to present next at her Book Club and this is sometimes what we would discuss at her house on Sunday nights. At her funeral, her Book Club was kind enough to give us a list of the books she had presented over the past 17 years, so I am posting them below. Eventually I will get a chance to read them. A discussion about books was the last conversation I had with her in July. I'm so grateful we were able to have the Fourth of July celebration on the property on 13th East and around 45th South in Salt Lake City that was sold to the city but has been in my family since pioneer times. It was a really fun night and the last time we were truly all together as a family. I was sad as we drove back to California because I had a feeling that something would change before we could do it again, but I didn't know who it would be or how soon the change would come. I'm grateful we had 80 years to enjoy her spirit and talents. I love you Grandma! I miss you!

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Oliver & Lael's 1st swim meet

2009-05-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

Oliver and Lael had their first swim meet - the timed trials to set their starting times for the season. They both competed in four strokes and did great. They each did one lap of freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and the butterfly. I was quite concerned about the last two strokes, and about battling Lael over wearing the swim cap but they did great. I'm not sure how competitive they'll be this year but so far they are having fun. We have a break for the holiday weekend and then we have meets almost every Saturday through the end of July. The only downside is that we have to be there at 7 am, which is brutal for us. This summer Erik will be dropping them off at 8:30 every morning to practice and then I'll pick them up at 9:15. Right now is a tad crazy with baseball and swimming, but we're down to our last four games. Yay! I think next year Oliver will be the only one doing baseball but we'll see how it goes. Gotta survive the last month of school first.

Easter Bunny lessons and other crazy stuff

2009-04-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

So I played around on Picnik.com. What dya think? Not too bad for 10 minutes.

I made Oliver take this. Wish I had put makeup on because this could have been a really good shot but I have so few decent photos of myself that I'll take it!

The lighting was so good that I got some great photos, despite the weird posing.

Oh, yes, the joys of Easter.

This year the Easter Bunny must have been really tired, because when she hid the Easter Baskets, she decided to put Lael's on top of the wall heater and when Lael finally found it, she cried because her big chocolate Bunny was all melted. So we put it in the freezer, which worked pretty fast, but it didn't look quite the same. Lael also refused to wear her Easter dress and insisted on wearing the holiday dress we bought for the wedding. If we get brave enough to have another child, I hope it's a girl that lets me dress her cause Lael certainly doesn't accept fashion advice from me, although she does critique my outfits. We went to the Sr. Swanons for an Easter Egg Hunt in their back yard and a great dinner complete with a filet minion roast. It was sunset so the light was perfect and I got some great photos. We played the Clue game that the Easter bunny brought and decorated Easter eggs, which Lael of course really got into.

Last week both the kids' baseball games got rained out, which was just as well, because I didn't feel that great the beginning of the week and then I had the baby shower that I had to help set up for and do the game (I did the candy bar matching game - similar to Concentration but when you match the words, you get the corresponding candybar - like "Baby Girl" is the Baby Ruth bar and "Baby Boy" is the Oh Henry Bar (which is hard to find by the way), "Triplets" is Three Musketeers and "Twins" is Mike & Ike, etc. I had played the game several times in Berkeley but no one had played it here, so it went over well. We also did a clothesline with baby clothes on the wall, which turned out cute. I'm invited to another baby shower and two bridal showers over the next 2 weeks, but thankfully I just have to show up to those.

Lael had her fieldtrip to the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum and they had enough parents going that they didn't need me so I went separately and took Henry. It was way too crowded, which made it less fun, and I didn't end up sticking with Lael as much as I thought I would, and apparently she got sad about that, so I ended up taking flak from some of the moms (who only have one or two kids, by the way) that this was her special time and I ruined it by bringing Henry. First, I didn't need to be there at all. And second, she was fine, although I do think some of her bad behaviors are attributed to being the middle child and I am going to do something with just her this week. I may take her to see Hannah Montana - against my better judgment because she hasn't even asked for it. One of the funny things Lael asked me last week was, "Mom, can I say whatever I want on my birthday?" I sensed a trick question here and said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Can I say Oh My g-a-d like Abigail (next door)?" I said, "No you can't swear just cause it's your birthday. And you spelled it wrong." Now she has been obsessed with telling people not to say it and even wrote it in the birthday card she gave to a friend last week, but I made her take it out. Crazy girl.

Oliver made a really cool birdhouse in Scouts. Henry dribbled a ball for the first time, which was impressive for a 1-year-old. He also loves to hang from the rings like a monkey at his gym class, which is pretty impressive at his age.

Anyway, we sure haven't figured out how to relax on the weekends. On Saturday we went to the Ward Easter Egg Hunt at Golfland in Castro Valley (someone in our ward is the longtime manager) and it was fun. After the hunt, we played a round of mini golf. Then we went over to San Francisco and went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. The kids made origami and we saw Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) and a Japanese sword collection and traditional Japanese dancers as well as bad modern music. Then we went and took pictures of Coors billboards for Secret Shops I had signed up for but we had to get a picture during the day and night, which meant we had to hang around until sunset, so we went to the Metreon for awhile and to Beard Papa's Cream Puffs. Then we got our night photos, came home and I entered them in and we were tired! Although this means my paycheck comes from Coors, it involves no interaction with people, so for $20 a billboard, I'll gladly take it! This will help pay for Lael's new bed. Now I just have to clear off and sell the desks to make room for it! Here's hoping for a very productive Spring Break week!

April Showers

2009-04-06T08:43:00.001-07:00

Hola! I can't wait for the break that starts this Friday. Last week was tough because Erik had a meeting with India every night at 8 or 9, including Friday. Erik usually puts the kids to bed and it's pretty chaotic because Oliver and Lael tend to fight and we're often also trying to get Henry down. Basically, I don't wish our bedtimes on anyone. Since it's impossible for Erik to work in peace, he spent several nights taking his conference call in the driveway while sitting in the minivan using our wireless internet connection and his laptop. Yes, poor guy. The car is now his office.

Living in 925 square feet definitely has its challenges. Right now all three kids are in the same room and Lael and Henry are both on the bottom of the bunk in a double bed. So I sent Erik with Oliver over to Santa Cruz to pick up a twin bed that I found on Craigslist for Lael. During the spring break we are going to turn what has been the office into a room for her. It's quite the undertaking - it means I have to get rid of a lot of stuff and sell several large pieces of furniture (desks, chairs and a TV), which is always a huge pain because of flaky Craigslist people, but it will be worth it. We are going to get a 55'' flat screen TV that will go above the piano in the living room and we are going off cable because Erik has put up an antenna on the roof and has built a sage system that works as a DVR. We are going to get everything we can't pick up off the air from hulu or the internet. It sure will be nice not to pay that cable bill!

This week I was asked to make 80 bridal shower invitations and same-day baby shower invites, so I whipped these out the same day on the computer - it was the only way I could get them done on such short notice. I included the files for you to see since I had them handy. I don't know why but the bridal shower invite colors came out really funky in the html version - it's actually pink and gold, but I guess something got lost in translation. Also, I helped someone else design these or I would have made slightly different choices but we put pearls on the swirls and they turned out cute enough. The baby shower invite was simple because I had 30 minutes to get it done and it was mostly emailed out. Hope the event turns out well, since it's such short notice and there is general conference.

Just to add to this week's craziness, we were offered the same multilevel communications business opportunity by no less than 3 ward members within 48 hours. Makes me feel like I'm living in Utah. Don't fear – we are passing (like we have the time even if we were remotely interested or weren't horrible salespeople). We won't be hitting you up at any rate.

The kids each had a rare birthday party to go to. Oliver took the GATE (gifted and talented) test Saturday. He could have taken it during school the week before but they had him listed under the wrong teacher and his teacher didn't bother to call me until the test was over. When I dropped Oliver off, the district people were strange. The woman in charge told us parents to go ahead and buy the children whatever gifts we had promised the kids for "passing" because they had already earned them (What? Like I promised him anything). Then she said they didn't use the terms "pass" and "fail" but they prefered the word "achieve" to describe a high score on the "intellligence assessment test." Whatever. Oliver thought the test was fun and he said he got everything right except the two questions he didn't have time to finish. The extreme overconfidence stems from the fact that he gets 100 percent every single week on the spelling pretest and math is his favorite subject, so he does well there too. It's hard to tell where he's really at, though, since he's in a group of kids where English is obviously their second language. I'm interested to see the results but there really are no programs offered him at our school – not until middle school, so it doesn't matter that much how he does for now. And it's not the only way to get him into the GATE program. We'll find out how he did at the end of the school year.

We had the usual Tuesday and Thursday baseball games but it was so cold Thursday that as soon as Erik got there I left with Henry and went to Costco. (I know, many of you are not feeling bad for me because I think it's cold in the 50s.) Lael said lots of funny things but maybe I'll remember them for next week. Henry didn't make any horrible messes, although he did baby experiments on what fits into an electric pencil sharpener and lost the battery cover moments after it was found and repaired. (We cleaned the house while watching Conference today and found lots of little missing things). And the Senior Swansons are back from their cruise - yay! We missed spending Sunday evenings at their house and it's good to be back in the routine, even though we probably drive them crazy. Here's hoping for an uneventful week so I can get that room ready! OK, so there's no hope for me since I have a fieldtrip for Lael and two baby showers. Hope it's a calm week for all of you at least.

Hikes, messes and other crazy stuff

2009-03-30T17:26:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, we went on a Cub Scout hike with Oliver to "Little Yosemite" in Sunol. The hills are always so pretty and green in the Spring in the Bay Area that it was past time we got out hiking. It was a 3.5 mile hike and we were quite the production with Lael and Lulu and Henry in a jogging stroller. As usual, Oliver and Lael couldn't hold their water and had to pee five times each. My favorite quote of the day was from Lael, who said, "I'm grateful for trees, so we can pee."

Oh, Henry. The first thing he still says every morning is "Awba" for Oliver (and Lael). And Erik and I are still "Mama." He also says "Wuwu" for Lulu and he belts "No!" quite often. He also repeats things and jabbers a lot. He loves to tell other babies no and is still figuring out his pecking order in the nursery at church, but he is a pretty friendly guy. His most recent discovery is that he can move chairs around and climb to reach things, which has caused no end of problems. Last week, he got to the water on the front of the fridge and flooded the kitchen a couple times. But his most destructive stunt was to move a chair to our utility drawer and get out a Sharpie, which he used to draw on the wall, door casing, cupboards and Kitchenaid Appliances. I ran out of Magic Eraser trying to clean it up and took a picture of him the next morning, which I've attached.

The sad part is, this happened while Henry was of course being quiet, and I was holed up in the bedroom trying to get the other two to sleep. This is usually Erik's task, but he was on a conference call for work. Erik has been getting up to check his emails, going to work, coming home in time to catch some of the kids' baseball games and then doing a conference call with India at 8 or 9, since it is the beginning of their workday. So it feels like he is working around the clock, with a few breaks. The idea is that the work continues in India after the workday here is done. He says that works great when communication is going well and can be very problematic when it isn't. With a house as small as ours, it's a challenge for Erik to work from home, especially on conference calls. He uses the mute button unless he is speaking. So it's been stressful around here. I just hope it all pays off someday! It is a high-profile job he's doing right now. The director (his manager's boss, who reports to the VP of Adobe) even brought him lunch last week. Of course, that was so Erik could continue working at his desk, but still. I do hope this pace doesn't last forever. He's got a companywide shutdown for Spring Break in a couple weeks. (And two more scheduled: for July, when we're going to Utah, and for October, when we're probably stuck here).

For Spring Break, we're sending Oliver to Tech ID camp, where he is going to learn how to make his own web site and design video games. Erik says it will help him start thinking like a programmer. Oliver is very excited. The summer camps are an outrageous $750, but they offer this Spring beta camp – where they test out tweaks in the planned summer programs – in Santa Clara only for $200, so we thought we'd take advantage of it since for Spring Break 2010 we're off to Las Vegas. This does mean we're stuck here this time, but that's OK. We have lots of home improvement projects to tackle and Erik wants to try to scuba in Monterey one of the days. It's easier to take just Henry and Lael to museums anyway because I can stay in the same areas. The stuff Oliver is interested in is often in a different section and it's hard to keep everyone entertained, so it'll be less stressful for me - and I'm all for less stress! I am really looking forward to the break - just 8 more days of school - because I'm losing it. On Friday, as I was dropping Lael off at school, I realized her whole class was coming out and I remembered it was an early day. You would think I would know this, since it was for an awards assembly - which I make the awards for. Thankfully she wasn't getting an award that day (or I'm sure I would have remembered), but still.

Lael had her last violin lesson Friday, where we turned everything in. She just wouldn't practice and didn't even want to go to the last lesson. It's sad because she was so excited at first. Maybe next year ...

We had the library Book Fair at school and it took me a week to recover. I am finally feeling "normal" - just in time to hold a Pampered Chef party for a friend – let me know if you need anything! – and I'm not doing another party for a loooong time. Last Saturday, I went to a Daughter's of the Utah Pioneers Camp Meeting, where I was the youngest member by about 30 years. The theme was the Ship Brooklyn and they had pulled out all the displays from the 1996 reenactment and sesquicentennial celebration. I am now working on using this for a Fourth Grade assembly for Oliver for next year and I would like to have an Olson family reunion out here with our Pugh cousins who want to come, since we have an ancestor who came over on the Brooklyn and who happens to be buried a couple blocks from my house. Why I'm willing take on these projects, I couldn't tell you. I like to think they are inspired, but sometimes I think it is just some personality flaw. I am also planning to be Boosters President one more year but then I would like a break. Anyway, next year, here we come.

Erik was released from his calling teaching Sunday School to the teenagers (this was ironic, since he was never actually called again after our ward merged and we were all released). But we're waiting to see what calling is coming next for him. His classroom had a broken clock, so he used our ipod as a timer to tell him when time was just about up and during his first Sunday back in adult Sunday School yesterday, a fire alarm sound went off and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from my husband's pants pocket right next to me. I guess he's still adjusting.

I bought the kids some Easter outfits and they wanted to wear them last week, so I attached a couple pictures of that. Lael asked me if I would put curlers in her hair. I guess it had been long enough that she had forgotten what they do and she was very distraught that her hair was so curly but I talked her into leaving it. Lael was also featured in the newspaper last week in a supplemental section put out by the school district about the bilingual program. Of course, they spelled her name Leal, which does pain me greatly as a copy editor, but since we put her into the Spanish program, this happens constantly.

In Olson family news, my sister Angie blessed her baby Alexis Sunday and my sister Sky has decided to go to BYU (yay!) and she has a half-tuition scholarship (congrats!). So say hi to her if you pass her on campus this coming fall. OK, I think that's probably more of an update than you wanted, but there you have it. Hope you all have a great week!

Another crazy week at the Swansons

2009-03-18T22:33:00.000-07:00

Monday started out cRAZy with Henry hiding ALL the keys and me walking Lael to school and then walking to pick up both Oliver and Lael (Erik takes Oliver to school in the morning on the way to BART, thankfully). I took pity on poor Lulu, who doesn't get out nearly enough, and brought her along on the walk. Halfway there, while I was picking poop up off a lawn with a bag, she was attached to Henry's bike handle and led him off the curb. He got scraped up and Lael was late for school. So I let Henry play at the park and then came home for his nap and tried to make cookies for the dessert for someone in our ward who just had a baby. I must have added an extra cup of flour because they weren't even edible. At that point, I was ready to call it a day and end the torture and just go to bed. Erik ended up coming home early to find the keys and rescue me so I could get the dinner over.

The rest of the week is somewhat of a blur. Lael finally hit the baseball and made it on base (she's really young to be playing in Minor B and it took her 3 games, but it's so nice to have them both on the same team and she's doing fine). She got the team ball, so she was happy. Oliver got the first team ball on Opening Day the Saturday before. We let him take a one-day training camp taught by professional baseball players a couple weeks ago and he's doing great, so it's definitely paid off. When I told him he needed to work on his throwing arm, he told me, "It's just that I need to fully rotate and follow through on my throw ... something about extension and release ...", so I guess it made an impression! On my birthday on Wednesday, I took two friends up to San Francisco and showed them around Yerba Buena Gardens and took them out to lunch at a neighborhood I hadn't been to but Erik recommended. I took Henry, which worked out great, since both these church friends had babies around 1 year old, but they are in their early 20s (one of them was turning 21 that day too) and they were shocked I am 34. I find it more shocking that Erik is almost 40, but I do find it interesting that I gravitate toward 20-somethings. It's also because there's hardly anyone out here my age to choose from anyway. That night we had a $7.99 Trader Joe's ice cream cake that I had bought that was really good. It was a fun day and reminded me that I would like to spend a lot more time in San Francisco - but it's going to have to wait for summer.

Saturday I did a makeup class for Lael's gymnastics and took Lael and Henry to a Chuck E Cheese party while Erik took Oliver to the batting cages and bought him gum (more on that later). For my birthday I tried a mineral body wrap, which did about 25 percent of what I wanted it to (my stomach still hasn't recovered from having an almost 11-pounder) but I guess I'm going to have to try to work the rest off on my own because I could only afford the one! But I was exhausted the rest of the day and Chuck E Cheese nearly did me in. Oh yes, I remember what else happened Saturday. Our three little monkeys jumped on the bed too much and when Erik sat on the corner, it collapsed, so he had to run to the hardware store and fix it later that evening. The bed was repaired just in time for Lael to throw her gum at Oliver and for him to throw it "just on her shirt" which of course got stuck in her hair so we ended up cutting it out (Erik didn't want to mess with the peanut butter - I don't know why). We have of course found gum all over the house now and it almost goes without saying we won't be having gum again for a long time. Sunday at church I actually started getting pictures up on the ward bulletin board I have taken it upon myself to work on and then we actually rested. We usually go to Erik's parents, but since they are on a cruise, we stayed home, made one of our Dream Dinners meals, cleaned and didn't have anyone over and it was good to have a break. Now onto the next crazy week ...

It's baseball season again!

2009-03-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

Opening Day was Saturday and Lael and Oliver had their first games of the season. They are both playing on the Giant's team in Minor B. They have a great coach and hopefully they'll both have lots of fun and improve a lot this season. They are the oldest and the youngest players on their team. Oliver should have a great year - he was able to hit the ball every time he was at bat and got the first game ball. Oliver will definitly move up to Minor A next year. Lael just turned 6, so she's a little young but she's got a great throwing arm and I think she'll do well. Thankfully the park they play at is about 2 miles from our house. There are two games and one practice a week, so it's pretty intense, and hopefully Henry will cooperate and stay off the field cause I volunteered to be our team's Safety Coordinator, and that's going to be a little awkward.

I've also signed them up for the Mission Valley Swim Team. They're going to be Barracudas. We'll try it for this swim season and see how it goes. Practices are every day after school and they should go to three each week and then meets are on Saturday mornings. When school is out, practices are in the morning through July. We'll see how the kids take having to jump in the pool early in the morning. At least they'll get good swimming skills out of it!

And, yes, I've heard all the advice about not overscheduling your kids and I've taken that into consideration. But my kids need to be active, or they become TV junkies. I would be more than happy to just stay home but that just doesn't work for us. And I do tire of the ladies in Relief Society giving their opinions about this issue. Gag me. Really what I'd like to cut out is the homework. We get insane amounts. Anyway, now you know what we'll be up to for the next few months!

Happy Inauguration Day!

2009-01-20T14:31:00.001-08:00

We are fresh back from our trip to Washington, D.C., where Obamamania is going on. There were no lack of Obama souvenirs and "I Love Michelle" T-Shirts, though we passed on the shirts. We were in D.C. area over the holidays for our nephew Carl's wedding. It was great and we hope that Carl and Allie enjoyed it - we sure did! It was hit and miss doing things with the family, especially because we drag around three opinionated little people everywhere we go, but we had a lot of fun. The weather for the first couple days was awesome - in the 60s and then it turned bitter cold, with a windstorm to boot. So when the kids became fascinated with the ice in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and Lael stuck her foot entirely in the water, we sure heard about it. There were many other misadventures,like missing the family photos at the reception and Lael throwing up in the rental car as we were getting out at the airport (which cost us a $100 cleaning fee by the way), but overall we had a great time. We stayed in Alexandria for the first week, which was awesome. Then we stayed with friends, including the Fennimores. It was great to see them and fun to catch up, even if it was brief. So thanks for letting us stay with you! We saw lots of the national sites and Erik's sister Lynn set up a tour of the Capitol for us. Henry loved the trains at the Arboretum. The kids got to ride a carousel on the Mall on one of the warm evenings. We went to the Spy Museum and saw Ford's Theater and the house where Lincoln died. We about froze to death while watching the changing of the guard at Arlingon Cemetary. We saw the breathtaking view of the Potomac from Mt. Vernon. We visited both Air and Space Museums - Oliver's favorite experience was a simulated flight. Lael got to paint on a real canvas with a real artist at the Torpedo Art Center, which was awesome. One of my favorite events was New Year's Eve at the National Patent Office. We went out to dinner with the Lambs at a funky restaurant in Alexandria and we got to the Patent Office as they were wrapping things up, so the clowns kept shoving balloons at the kids and we ended up with way too many. They even made a leash for Henry's balloon slug and a sword holder that Oliver used around his head (something that would only be a good idea with a balloon sword). Then we went to a magic show that Henry wouldn't sit for and had to walk the 12 blocks back to the hotel since the buses were all full and Lael walked into a post office box and we had to hear about it all the way back. Sorry if we wore you out Melanie! Anyway, it was lots of fun to see the sites but it was even more fun to be with family and friends. Oliver and Lael had fun with the friends we stayed with and can never get enough of their cousin Melanie. So we are headed out to see the Lambs (at least the ones still at home) next month and to go with Melanie to Disneyland for Lael's 6th birthday.

my holiday top 5

2008-12-20T14:43:00.000-08:00

The holiday season is upon us and I thought I would post my Top 5 list of holiday things that make me tick and things that tick me off. So here goes:

things that make me tick
1. the feeling of community
2. gifts that are useful
3. well-done holiday parties (that's been awhile!)
4. playing games
5. getting things that I wanted but didn't know about (this happening is very rare indeed)

things that tick me off
1. the greedfest when everyone opens tons of gifts at the same time
2. computers that run out of space while I'm in the middle of designing my christmas cards
3. curmedgeons
4. ungrateful children
5. lawn ornament snow globes

I also hate those blow-up snowman and santas that sit like empty colored sacks on the lawn during the day. These are pure blight, but they still don't top the snow globes. We have a lot of these because people around here shop at Costco and Lowe's, where they are located, and I suppose they are somewhat affordable, but darn they make our neighborhood ghetto. Sometimes less is more. For some reason, we also have lots of icicles. Erik finally had to go out today and buy hooks to drill into the overhang so we could hang our lights. Since we live in a flat-roofed house with no eves and no gutters, hanging lights was pretty darn near impossible. I made an attempt to tape them up but I can't recommend this method, since they all fell down on the ground after one night, where they have been sitting for more than a week. But in my defense, I have been busy - and we've had a cold spell (yes, I know in the 20s isn't that bad for most of you, but I actually had to use my credit card on the windshield this week!). Well, I better get back to designing those Christmas cards which are now going to be New Year's cards. Have a great holiday!

I can see! (and other updates)

2008-12-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

These pictures are from Ardenwood Farms, where Henry and I went with Lael on her first fieldtrip last week and had a great time. We all spent two weeks in Utah for Thanksgiving break and had lots of fun with the cousins. I had Lasik surgery there and so far it's been a success! I have 20/15 vision in one eye and 20/20 in the other. Although it still goes in and out sometimes, which is a little disconcerting, and I have the expected dry eye issues, it's still been pretty good. I was able to do Lasik because I used the Hoopes Vision Center and they had the latest lasers, which took less tissue and corrected my vision with an impressive 10 seconds in one eye and 11 in the other (the lasers out here would have been around 45 seconds in each). Also, instead of creating a plateau, with light aberrations around the edges, the new lasers curve with your eye. I think I had better results because of the newer technology, so I am happy I had it done in Utah, even though it was definitely a factory.

We did a lot while we were in Utah, and it was good to have a break! I went to the New Kids on the Block concert with my sisters (yes, again!), we stayed a night in Midway and Erik went scuba diving in the Homestead Crater while Oliver and Lael swam with Grandma Olson (I couldn't swim because of my surgery and Henry was too young). We also stayed two nights in Wolf Creek. We had an awesome Thanksgiving Day at Dan and Clare's. It was definitely an eventful trip. I made a bad call on the way there and we ran out of gas, which put us back an hour because we had to call AAA, but we made it! We watched Clare's family slaughter their turkey, which was interesting. I do want the kids to know where their food comes from, and I guess that was one way to show them. It didn't deter them because that's about the only thing they ate was turkey the next day. That same day we sadly ran over a dog on the way to Wolf Creek. It was running down the middle of our lane and there was nothing we could do, so we were sad and tried to find the owners. But for the most part our trip was very good.

We met Allie, Carl's fiancé and had dinner with them and Caitlyn and Erika at the Mayan. We also got to see other friends we haven't been able to catch up with for awhile. We are back and things are in full-on holiday season (along with the usual craziness of the Boosters, overwhelming amounts of homework, Scouts, the dog ...). So I can't promise I'm going to be great at keeping things up to date but I'll try! We're going to Washington D.C. for Allie and Carl's wedding, so we're excited about that. Hope you are having a great December!

You know you live in the S.F. Bay Area when ...

2008-10-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

A couple things have happened recently that have been reminders that we live in a very metropolitan area and made me laugh. First, I just can't seem to stop myself from volunteering. I need to learn to sit on my hands or something. But I was at the library with Henry for their free rhyme time and they announced that they will only be doing their program every other month since they are lacking volunteers. I had talked about having the few people with babies in my ward over to my house or the church and running something similar but this just sounded a lot simpler, so I signed up to volunteer and went to the first training meeting. A mother there said she would be willing to set up a yahoo group for the library volunteers. I said I had had more success with the google group I had set up and I liked using google docs and she said yahoo had something similar. So I asked if she worked at yahoo or something and she said yes. I thought that was very funny. I told her I really didn't care which one if that was the case, but she went ahead and set up the google group.

On Sunday we were at Erik's parents' house for dinner and I was telling them that I just bothered to take a look at Lael's classroom last week and see what the genetic makeup of the class was. I told them Lael was the only white child and there was one black child and the rest were all Hispanic (which is what you'd expect in a Spanish immersion class). And Oliver said, "No, mom. There is one black girl and all the rest of the kids are white." I think it's great that my kids are so integrated that they don't even notice, much less feel intimidated. I've come a long way from Utah, where it was 98 percent white through high school for me, although I doubt it would be quite that ratio now. I guess Oliver was right that Lael is the only one in the "non-Hispanic white" category. I really don't get the point in having to check this "politically correct" box, but it has popped up on many forms lately. Anyway, I think it's great we live in this culturally diverse area and I love that my kids are learning to speak Spanish, with a great accent to boot - although Lael just walks around talking gibberish with a Spanish accent right now. But it has worked out great for us and I know it will serve them well in the future. Now if I could just find the time to learn Spanish ...

I finally lost it

2008-10-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

It's taken a lot to get there but apparently I have finally resorted to screaming at random members of the community. This past week after Scouts I took all three kids to Trader Joe's. Shopping with all three children is something I try hard never to do. Lael's chatter alone is enough to blast all thoughts out of my brain but it becomes very difficult when adding Henry, who is currently a menace when he's set free (and I never get more than 5 minutes before I have to walk around holding him or he protests very loudly). And then there's Oliver, who exists just to torture his sister and make her scream, which I admit doesn't take much. Anyway, I survived the store and we were getting in the car. I had the last two grocery bags in my arms and was putting them in the car when an approaching woman said, "Excuse me. You know, that's really not very nice." I looked over and realized my cart had rolled up against her car. I said, "I didn't realize it rolled." And then, as I processed her words and annoying tone of voice, something snapped, and I added, "Lady, you really need to get a life." And then I yelled, "I'm doing tHe BEST I CAN!" Then I got in my car and drove off with my children, who had of course witnessed the whole thing. So in the aftermath of The Incident, I have analyzed how I got to the state where I would yell at random strangers, in an attempt to avoid ever getting there again.

I admit I released my pent-up frustration from several issues onto this woman, but I think what drove me over the edge was her annoying tone of voice and her assumption that I had noticed and didn't care about her precious car. So, really, I think she is one of those people that's a harpie and she deserved it but I still wish I hadn't lost it. There were several contributing factors. The Journey concert we went to was frustrating because it was sold out so the lawn seats were pretty tight. Citizens were righteously indignant that the people in front of them were standing so the only way they could see was to stand. I expect this kind of thing from these events. It's life. What I found really irritating, however, was that when my chair touched the blanket of the party next to me, I was told, "Someone will be sitting there." And when that person finally arrived, he smoked and he kept it low so that it blew right in my face (Note to self: when smoking in crowded, public areas, make sure to put the cigarette higher so that the smoke blows over to annoy other people instead of the person right next to you.) So apparently it was rude to encroach on someone's physical space but forcing someone to eat smoke is OK. Next issue: I have been doing too many unofficial church callings and I need to extricate myself somehow without being condemned. So on Sunday when I said to a sister, "Oh my goodness! I didn't return your phone call." and she said, "No, you didn't." in a very sour tone, I thought, well, there's going to be a lot more where that came from if I continue to do this job, so get used to it or let me out! And then there's the Boosters Club. As my friend Jennette said about her house, it's like having another child, who doesn't love you. I'm working my tail off just to make progress at a snail's pace. I'm not even remotely thinking about giving up but I definitely need to work smarter. I've been doing the work of at least 5 people. I've neglected everything and given up time with my family to get this organization up and running and I will succeed but I am going to take a break. I haven't taken the time to blog or do anything extra because I've been giving it all to the school. Anyway, that's most of how I got to yelling at random people in the parking lot. I just hope no one from the school was there. And now I'm officially taking my break!

Oliver's been baptized!

2008-09-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Oliver's baptism was a big success (thanks to lots of family support!). Thank you to all our family and friends who came out to support Oliver. He had a great day. All my family except Aaron and Joni traveled from Utah to California for the event. Aaron and Joni had a good excuse, since baby Luke joined their family a week ago but we'll have to get the entire family together one day. It was fun to see everyone. I wish we could have spent more time with everyone individually. I was also trying to get the Booster Club started and basically I cut both a little short. I haven't had time to record life these past two weeks because it seems I've barely had time to live it! Thank you especially to Angie and Lynn, who rehabed my backyard in one afternoon and saved me endless amounts of embarrassment. Sarah also helped a lot in cleaning the house. Sorry this has taken so long to post. We had a blackout over the weekend and my computer's power supply bit the dust so a couple days and $185 later, I am finally back in business - and grateful to have a computer!

1st Day of Kindergarten

2008-09-04T17:36:00.001-07:00

It was Lael's first day of Kindergarten. She is pictured here with Lulu the dog, our newest member of the Swanson clan (as if we needed more chaos, but she's already part of the fam and she's as good as dogs get). So, the battling to get her to school each day has begun. She picks different issues each day. This girl is just plain difficult. When we got to school, she didn't want to wear her nametag so I took her over to her teacher and said, "Lael doesn't want to wear this but you can make her." It was kind of like throwing down the gauntlet and saying, "Here. This one is your challenge now." She tried on many outfits that morning and finally decided this was the one. It was blazing hot but she insisted on wearing the jacket.

Oliver started third grade and has Mr. Flores, who he seems to really like.

I set up this display outside the kindergarten room for the Booster Club. It was a crazy day and I was up until 2:30 am getting it all done. Of course it didn't help that I decided to make cream puffs for the teachers and was making those at midnight. My friend Monica arranged for me to get Jamba Juice for the teachers and they were a big hit! Thanks Monica!

Lael has the same look of tharn Oliver did when she started school but she seemed to have fun.

This is Henry and me after a very long morning (and a weekend of camping and a very long summer spent entertaining the kids). This is probably the last post I will do for a week or so. My family is coming into town for Oliver's baptism. Plus I have the Booster Club to get going and all that. But I am really, really hoping with the time the kids are in school I can get stuff done. It's been about survival for so long that the house has really suffered and especially the office is a disaster. My sisters Sarah and Angie are coming out early next week and they want to help me finish the ceilings that we never got to (we ripped the popcorn off three years ago when we moved in and haven't done more since). Sarah got back from her mission to New Zealand last night so I'm capitalizing her while she's still in humanitarian mode. I can't tell you what makes me take on way more than is humanly possible, but I do blame it on the genes from my Dad's side of the family. I seem to thrive on the challenge. But I am getting burned out and need to cut back in some areas, like in my church service. Anyway, here's hoping the school year brings a more sane existence to me and the Swanson family (even with the dog)!

Cruisin' along

2008-08-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

The summer is cruisin' along with only one week to go and I'm having trouble keeping up - partly because so much of my time is now spent entertaining kids and partly because I have been doing so much for others. I've finally got this one cruise photo posted. Oliver and Lael had a blast on the Disney Cruise. Although there were definitely fun parts for the rest of us and we are glad we went and grateful the rest of Erik's family (with the exception of one niece who was working) came with us, we are definitely ready to take a trip without the kids! We're considering a 10-day Alaska cruise in 2010 with some friends. We'll see ... I will try and get more pictures posted this weekend. Sorry it takes me so long to get to everything! We snuck off to the beach in Santa Cruz with the Englishes Wednesday afternoon and it turned out to be a beautiful day so I was really glad we went. We got there just in time to see the Chinese Acrobats, which was amusing but after watching so much Olympics coverage, I'm a little hard to impress. We're looking forward to Wente next weekend and then summer's over! I'm hoping to get the house under control while the kids are at school. Wish me luck!

The defiant one

2008-08-06T23:13:00.001-07:00

Today when we got to the movie theater for the weekly kids summer $1 movie - today was Bee Movie - Lael got out of the car without shoes on. This happens regularly and I am sick of it. If we hadn't had an extra child along (I was helping his mom out), then I would have just sent Oliver in to the movie and I would have sat out in the car with her for the entire movie. As it was, I saw about 15 minutes of the movie because Henry was much more interested in running up and down the aisles and in front of the screen. But I made Lael pay Oliver one point per sock (that's 50 cents), so she wore his socks and he went in with just his shoes and with no socks on. But I'm obviously going to have to make her pay a price soon or this showing up places without shoes on will never end. Honestly, it's this kind of crap that makes me glad to have school coming up so I won't have to spend all day every day with her. It's hard to deal with her without a break.

I've already had to modify so many of my dreams, both because of her choices and because that's how life has worked out. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago on the day I could tell she was going to pull her front tooth out. It made me sad because I really wanted kindergarten pictures before she lost her front teeth. Erik and I have such cute kindergarten pictures and I was hoping the kids would have them too. After our front teeth came in, we both looked a little gangly for awhile. Oliver's kindergarten picture turned out OK, except that someone wetted and combed his hair right before they took the picture so it looks kind of funky. Anyway, so much for that dream.

My current plan for the kids for college is to ship them off to BYU in Provo, UT to be near my family for college. It's really hard to get in now but I think the kids are smart enough. I'm sure I've got quite a few battles to fight with Lael but hopefully she won't choose college as one of them. So far she is quite the defiant child. But darn if she isn't cute!

Heatwave!

2008-07-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

I know I've once again neglected my blog, but as always, I have good excuses. We are still recovering from tent camping in an RV camp for the July Fourth weekend. This week brought oral surgery for me, babysitting for ward members who were in need of help, soccer, dance, the beginning of Jr. Giants baseball and scout camp for Oliver, all in the midst of a heatwave. Somehow that sentence doesn't even remotely cover how much stress this week was to get through.

Last night Erik and I went to The Police in concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. I have definitely had my share of second-hand pot smoke for the year between white trash camping and the concert, but the music was good. We have tickets to the Journey concert in September (Heart and Cheap Trick are opening) and I have tickets to go see New Kids On The Block (two sets actually - in San Jose and Salt Lake but I haven't made up my mind which one I'm going to). Calm down - it was the first concert I ever went to with my friend Tamra and I think it will be fun, although I know their new stuff is not that great. We're thinking of coming out in November for two weeks (driving out and flying Erik back and forth to work) so I can go to the Nov. 17 concert and we can spend Thanksgiving with the Olsons. We haven't worked out the details yet and we've been so good for the past three years since Oliver has been in school about not taking the kids out of school that I won't feel bad about doing it. But it does make things hard when they're in bilingual Spanish and we're not fluent.

This weekend we have a Giant's baseball game after the kids' games and Erik has to change the transmission fluid on the car before we drive to LA for the Disney Cruise. Fun, fun!

Two strikes against breastfeeding

2008-06-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

Some of you may not yet know about my botched attempt at eye surgery. In December, just after Erik got hired on at Adobe, I decided to look into getting Lasik done. I figure if I'm ever going to do it, I might as well get to enjoy a decade without glasses. So I did my research online and chose Scott Hyver Visioncare. He is the 49ers eye doctor and has several offices in the area. So I went to see him and got the sad news that I would only qualify for PRK, which is like Lasik, but instead of cutting a flap and molding your eye, they mold the top layer, which means you have to regrow the top layer. This takes several days - at least one very painful one. Because I have a thinner than average cornea, I risked having my prescription slip after a year or 18 months with Lasik. The only option if that happens is to wear rigid contact lenses. The reason I don't wear contacts much right now is because my eyes are so dry so this would be horrible for me and wasn't worth the risk. But I was definitely bummed that I wasn't a Lasik candidate. I went ahead and scheduled the surgery for Memorial Day weekend, thinking that would be far enough away to handle things with Henry better, and I arranged for my Mom to come out and help since I wouldn't be able to drive for a few days. I asked about breastfeeding and they told me that wasn't a problem. We put aside the $4,000 in the flex spending account and I was locked in. So the date finally arrived, my mom was out here and I psyched myself up (which was actually really hard) and Erik drove me to the office. I paid my money and had my eye tests and asked the eye doctor if they could prescribe a different medication for after since the one I had didn't look like I should breastfeed with it. She said she would go check with Dr. Hyver and when she came back, she said I would have to reschedule because they had just changed procedures during the surgery a couple weeks ago and several of the drops they used would not be conducive to breastfeeding and they couldn't change back right then, so that was that. They refunded my money and I went home and actually had a fun Memorial Day weekend with my parents in San Francisco. Strike One.

Our latest saga is that Henry has eight teeth and half of them have cavities. The tops are just a rotting away every time I breastfeed him apparently. I took him in because he has a very obvious cavity in the front of one of his top teeth and they told me there are cavities all behind the front top teeth. I am supposed to brush his teeth in the middle of the night or whenever I feed him, which is pretty impossible to do, since one of the reasons we are in this predicament in the first place is because he resists the toothbrush. According to the dentist, since he is under 3 years old, he is "precooperative," a term which Erik apparently finds hilarious and has now used at least a dozen times since he heard it. So they are going to have to sedate him and are recommending four caps on his top four teeth. It is very sad. I am not sure whether to fight to have the cavities filled or not because at his age the chances are they will have to be capped anyway before they fall out. Poor kid has Oliver's teeth, I guess (Oliver got 5 caps at age 3) but in our defense, Lael has yet to have a cavitiy. At any rate, that is Strike Two.

Sadly, the root canal I got last year is failing and I am pretty sure I am going to have to have work done on it again. Between paying for Henry's dental bills, which will be extensive, getting me new glasses (since mine are four years old and I can hardly wait another minute), and another root canal, I'm thinking maybe we'll just put $2,000 into braces for Oliver (since he has an overbite and they are recommending early orthodontic care) and that will pretty much take care of the $4,000. If we do that I'm not sure I'm up for getting my eyes done next year. It was a lot harder to psych myself up for than I thought it would be and I don't know if I want to go through it again and I would have to have help come out again. It's only June and what a year we've already had!

Summer update

2008-06-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

So summer has finally begun. The end of the school year was a doozy. Last Thursday night I got myself voted Booster Club (PTA) president but I am essentially the queen of nothing unless I get it organized because we don't even have anybody to be treasurer. So that should be fun. On Friday I put on a movie matinee of Ratatouille, which the whole school was invited to and I was sweating bullets because I didn't know if we would have 40 kids or 400 and I had to arrange popcorn and do everything for it and I was afraid it would be just me and the principal with a bazillion kids, but it turned out OK. We had 60 kids and some parents stayed to help. I really have to get this school web site done so we can communicate! I learned to not give the kids too much water because the spills and potty breaks got crazy! Anyway, on Saturday we had Henry's 1st birthday party and the kids spent all day fighting like banshees so it was hard to get anything done. We just joined a swim club and had the party up at the pool. It was a cowboy pool party so we had a BBQ. But I wasn't as organized as I would have liked because of the aforementioned fighting and we forgot the meat, so Erik had to run home. Then I realized I had forgotten the Henry Trivia game that I had spent all morning on, but I didn't realize it until almost the end of the party. I spent another 20 minutes retrieving that from home and when I got back we were out of time, so we grabbed everything and headed to the parking lot where we served cupcakes and I posted the Henry Trivia game to the car. It was crazy but fun. Sunday was Father's Day so we went to Erik's parents. Monday we had a visit from a friend from Oregon, Mike Christenson. It was fun to see him and catch up, although my house was in quite a state by this time and I as mortified, but he was kind about it. This left me with one night to get Oliver's yearbook done that I had committed to do for his class because the next day was the last day of school, so it meant an all-nighter for me. I finally gave up wrestling with the printer and went to bed from 4:30 - 6:00 am and then got up to get them done and showed up at his classroom with one hour to spare and had the moms finish assembling them. It wasn't my finest work, but they got done. I actually felt OK that day and started getting the house back under control, but I paid the rest of the week and didn't feel good. I tried to nap this afternoon but just ended up getting mauled by Henry. We told Oliver and Lael we would pay them if they played with Henry while we took a nap but it didn't work. He kept coming in and bugging us and then he bit me and dropped a remote on my head so I am going to go to bed now instead of taking the time to make this blog grammatically perfect. Anyway, this week we're onto swim lessons, trips to the library, etc. My kids are both so manic. Within half an hour of getting up Thursday, Oliver declared "summer stinks!" because I informed him he could not turn on the TV until he had done a job, gotten dressed and eaten breakfast. But Friday afternoon after we went swimming, he declared this was "the second day of the best summer ever!" Anyway, here's hoping!

Which child will be the last straw poll

2008-06-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

If you chose Oliver, this week you are correct! It started on Thursday when I got the call from Blacow Elementary saying he was out of lunch money and couldn't borrow any more this close to the end of the school year so I either had to bring money now or he would have to eat a cheese sandwich they would give him. This would have been fine with him - he hates that the principal makes them eat their veggies in the school lunch so he usually chooses to bring a sandwich, so I ran the money over.

That afternoon I took my parents to the airport. On Friday morning, he announced his final project, a report on snakes which he hadn't started, was due the day before. I recall seeing a paper about this about the time of my botched surgery (more on that in another blog) but there was so much going on I had forgotten about it. So we knew what we would be doing last weekend.

Sunday night we were at Erik's parents for dinner and he did his report. When we got home, we worked on the diorama that had to accompany the report and presentation. We painted on some trees but I didn't take the time to plastitak the plants and snakes in like we usually do. I got him up early Monday morning to finish the diorama so of course he was running late for school.

Around noon, I got a call from Blacow asking to come pick him up for personal reasons. (I dread getting calls from the school in the middle of the day.) As I was taking him home to get a change of pants, he says to me, "The stuff disappeared out of my diorama." I asked what he was talking about and he said it must have fallen out of the box when he ran into the school. There had been lots of recesses by this time and I thought the chances of him getting his stuff back were slim. The only option I could think of was to make an announcement over the PA system telling any kids who picked up plastic snakes or plants off the ground today to turn them into their teacher. But I said a prayer and took him back for the last hour of school and parked about where Erik usually drops him off. Sure enough, on the grass near a driveway outside the school was where everything dumped out. Then we had to get someone to let him into his classroom because he didn't want to get in trouble for having a handful of toys at recess. Anyway, the kid is going to do me in. Seriously. The only real question up for debate is whether Lael or Henry will beat him to it.

Sam Duzett sighting!

2008-06-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

Our very talented and busy nephew Sam Duzett came to San Francisco on choir tour, so we popped up in San Francisco to see him. The choir was very good and I think our kids enjoyed the concert (thank goodness it wasn't too long for them!). I wish we could expose them to more cultural events like this. It was my first time in St. Anthony's church, and I really like going to old churches. It makes me wish we valued architecture more in the LDS church. I sure do miss the Berkeley Ward chapel. Anyway, afterward, we took him next door to Beard Papa's Cream Puffs. It's my new favorite place to visit when going to Yerba Buena Gardens. Then we raced back to Oliver's baseball game so it was a crazy day but worth going!

Baby at the wheel!

2008-05-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Henry is happiest when waiting for the kids in the car while they play sports or Oliver is at piano, etc. He has spent so much time at the wheel that he has chewed on it and I had to get a wheel cover because it started falling apart.

Isn't being a third child tragic? These are some of the looks I get from Henry when I put him in his seat. He hates the carseat but he is generally good natured, so that means he fights it until he is in and then he is resigned to his fate. It helps when the kids are in the car to entertain him. I'm hoping when we get to turn his seat around in a few short weeks (because he will be a year!) that will help. He's got such a cute guppy face. I sometimes get told he looks like a Cabbage Patch baby because of the cheeks but my favorite is when they tell me he's a Precious Moments baby. I wish I had the time to take more pictures to capture the moments because he really is cute (although this is a few months ago and he's gotten so much more blonde).

How it went

2008-05-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

So Oliver read Duck for President at Reading in the Park. As he was getting ready, he couldn't decide whether to wear his old falling-apart Heelies or his new Skechers shoes, so he asked me, "Think I should wear one of each?" I told him no, but I didn't realize until I saw the picture that he had actually done it. That's Oliver for ya!

Erik and I snuck out of the Booster Club event for an hour and left the kids at a friends' house to go out to Salang Pass. It's our favorite Afghan restaurant in Fremont and we hadn't been for a year (Ashley, I thought of you!). If you come visit, we'll take you there! I had to cancel our reservations at La Fondue in Los Gatos, but we'll make it there someday ...

It was a crazy week - as usual I guess but slightly crazier. We had two friends staying with us while their parents were out of town, added to the usual baseball chaos and other random events. Rob Duzett was in town for 24 hours, so we dragged the entire crew to have ice cream with him in San Jose. It was fun to see him for a few minutes. Lael said, "I like that uncle!" Thanks for the treat (and for being such a good sport)!

Other recent insanity includes me going to National Scrapbook Day with friends while Erik took our kids and two nonmember friends to a Primary friends activity and then to a baseball game on Saturday. That night we tried to go to San Francisco to see the KFOG Kaboom fireworks but BART was closed (Weird! I guess it was some kind of electrical problem.), so we drove up and then decided to try to see the fireworks from Treasure Island. This has worked for us before, although parking is always stressful because we're never the only ones with this idea. But I won't be trying it again because the fireworks were too far away and we did not have a good view from the places we could park on the island. Anyway, sorry Oscar and Caroline - we'll plan better next year! I've also sold more furniture on Craigslist and if I can just sell the PS2 and games, I'll have the trampoline paid for. Maybe next month ... Now if I could only get to the long-overdue laundry so we didn't have to dig through a mountain of clean clothes for socks every morning ...

Happy 11th Anniversary

2008-05-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's been

Hi Erik,

I'm sorry I didn't have time or energy to come up with a present this year, but I love you! I am still glad I married you! Thank you for hanging in there with me through the constant craziness that is our life. I've been thinking of all the things we've been able to do together:

Spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii
Experience July Fourth at Mt. Rushmore
Party hard at Spring Break in Las Vegas
Shop the Christmas markets in Prague
Hang out at the Winter Olympics
Visit Yosemite in Winter
Cruise to Mexico

and I thought, what should we do next? Let's do it all again! Love you!

Emily

The big game

2008-05-01T12:38:00.001-07:00

Of course there are a million things I should be doing right now besides blogging, but I have taken pity on you, dear loyal readers, and I am giving you an update. If you ever see lots of posts from me, I guess that means I am finally caught up with life, so don't hold your breath. We went to an A's game with some friends last week and it was a lot of fun. We wanted the kids to have a clue what game it was they were trying to play. Erik bought Oliver a flag and when he was waving it, we got put up on the jumbotron. We just bought the seats when we got there (for $10) each so we were in the outfield in the Plaza Reserved section with literally no one around us so it was ironic that that was the day we got up on the monitor, but it was fun. The A's won - yay! Personally, I'm hoping the move to Fremont goes through. Anyway, my favorite moment of the game was when Lael asked me, "Who do you think is going to get the game ball?" The Angels and Rockies coaches give out the game ball to whoever they feel did the best job each game and Lael and Oliver have both been coveting the game ball all season. They both finally were the ones to get their game balls this week. Yay! I was afraid Lael's coach would let her disdain for me get in the way of giving Lael the ball but Lael worked hard for it and got it Saturday. Oliver has had a hard time hitting the ball lately. The last couple games the only time he's made it on base is when he's taken one for the team and gotten hit with the ball by the kid pitcher. Kid pitch is rough at this age and I wish they wouldn't do it. Anyway, he got on first base this last game and got the game ball so we're happy for him too.

I'm sorry I haven't been good at keeping current on my blogging. I've started whiny blogs that you should be glad I didn't post about how my children are lazy and uncooperative and how Henry is teething so we aren't getting enough sleep but I never finished them, so you have been spared. But it's been stressful lately. I know I've had enough when I start fantasizing about getting an apartment that I go to live at during the day because it's nice and clean and then I come back to live with these slovenly folk at night or when I want to. I'm not saying I don't make messes. What I'm say is that when five people are messing and only one is cleaning up after them while trying to drag everyone to heaven with her, well, it doesn't go well. Enough of that. But if you want a laugh, go visit my friend Tamra's blog. She has an awesome article titled, "Spaghetti squash can be hazerdous to women" that'll make you laugh til your ribs hurt.

I'm getting the kids signed up for summer activities. There's a lot to choose from around here. We're going to buy a swim club pass from some friends who are moving, so that will be fun. I'm also signing the kiddos up for soccer and Giants Baseball (since it's free!). I've got to keep them busy but I have turned down summer school because I want to have entire free days where I can go to the beach or just stay home once in a while and not do anything! Imagine that! I haven't been bored in 7 years. I mean that literally, people. Well, off to my mountain of tasks ...

Lael's nail fettish

2008-04-22T07:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-03T21:51:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

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 ...

Our little nonconformist

2008-03-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Last week in the car on the way home from preschool, Lael announced, "You should have named me Hermione." I used to have a twinge of guilt that people have had such a hard time pronouncing her name and I constantly have to repeat it, but at this point, I realize we do not have an average child on our hands and she definitely needed an unusual name, so Lael fits and I am very glad we chose it for her. (For those of you who don't know, it's Hebrew and literally means "of God" - "la" is "of" and "El" means "God," as in Elohim.) Anyway, I just bought towels for my bathroom - I figure after being married 10 years, it's time to have a put-together, matching bathroom. I chose Restoration Hardware towels and bought them on sale and with a coupon and they were still outrageously expensive but they were available in a range of aquas, so now we each have our own coordinating, monogrammed towel in a different color. This has cut down on laundry significantly because now when a towel is on the ground, I know who's it is and I only end up washing them once a week. Erik and I have the same initials, so I ordered Erik one white towel so he couldn't forget which one was his because it really stands out and has his initials. Well, Lael's initals are LDS, which is kinda cute. The only problem is that when you do the traditional form of monogramming with the last name as the big letter and the initials of the other names on either side, it turns her initials into LSD. All I can say is: I didn't see that one coming and having Lael has been a trip.

Take T-ball for instance. Saturday was Opening Day, complete with a pancake breakfast, a parade and ballgames. Our little nonconformist did not want to wear her uniform. Lael thought she would be able to play in whatever shirt she wanted. We finally convinced her she would have to wear her team T-shirt with her No. 5 on the back, and then the coach said she would have to wear her hair in a ponytail because "it says so in the rules." I'm not so sure this is true. Although it was a battle, Lael finally let me do it. But her hair was so short (since she and her friend Ryan cut it a few weeks ago) that most of it fell out of the ponytail by the end of the games anyway. I am going to have to choose whether to fight the coach or my daughter and I'm interested in what the actual rules are but I think her hair is short enough that it is not a reasonable request. I'll keep you posted. There are five T-ball teams in the league this year and they wanted everyone to play on Opening Day, so it was a double header for her. Everyone on her team needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the second game, so we ended up having a 10-minute potty break between innings. Then Lael made the classic T-ball play of throwing the ball home and beaning the runner in the back of the helmet. Another little girl ran all the way to first base with her bat while everyone yelled at her, "Drop the bat!" There are always plenty of moments worth watching in a T-ball game.

Both Oliver and Lael were playing at the same time. It was a little tough to watch both games at once but we could stand between the fields because they are close together and turn back and forth, and I'd rather have that than be there ALL the time (they each have two games and a practice a week). Oliver had a double play (two runners scored off one of his hits) in his game. It lasted more than two hours and the final score was 15-15. We went to the sporting goods store between events to complete the kids' uniforms and that night we went to a birthday party at Pump It Up and had Book Club, so Saturday was a full, crazy day. Thankfully, not every day is this crazy, but by the end of dealing with unreasonable kids, random disagreeable members of the community and a crazy schedule like this, it's a wonder I don't have a migraine every day and am sane at all! Here's hoping for a nice, calm birthday week for me.

Play Ball!

2008-03-05T22:05:00.000-08:00

Apparently it now practically takes an act of Congress to register your child for kindergarten in California. The list of things I had to bring to register Lael included our escrow papers, no less than 3 utility bills, 12 assorted completed and signed documents (including several applying for or denying financial aid for school lunches, etc.), proof of a doctor's appointment for a physical, and of course the only item that should reasonably be required: her birth certificate or passport. The secretary taking the registration obviously enjoyed her position of power and took her job very seriously. Unfortunately for me, I had no choice but to try and play the game as efficiently as possible because I didn't want to take a chance on Lael not getting into the Spanish immersion program (enrollment varies from year to year and sometimes they end up having a lottery) and I was juggling 3 kids while getting this done. To keep down on the clutter, we don't have our bills sent to the house, so I had printed out most of the bills from online. But I did provide them with our original insurance bill, so it was ironic when this was the bill the secretary chose to question. She pointed to the line that says "Please pay this amount" because next to that it says "This is not a bill." She said she could only accept bills. I told her that this was our bill and it says that there because we are set up on autopay. She finally chose to accept the document since she said was tired and feeling generous. This was my second appointment because she didn't accept some of the documents from the first time around, until I brought in the printed-out list of instructions from the district web site and she finally believed me that the documents in question were admissible. Geez Louise. You would think we lived in a sought-after school boundry, but we don't. People have lied to get in to some of the other schools in the district so they make everyone go through this to register. Anyway, after two appointments, loads of paperwork and one power-tripping secretary, Lael is finally registered for kindergarten!

The kids have started T-ball and baseball. The games start Saturday but the craziness has already begun with several practices a week and I am being bled for money. Lael has her pink bat, mit and helmet and is very excited to be playing her first (and possibly only) year of T-ball. I will probably never be team mom or PTA president because I am too cheap. I think a $150 team banner is a moronic waste of money and I would rather see the banner made by someone (if there has to be one). I just didn't have the energy to volunteer to do it myself this year so I forked out the $20 each for them. At the end of the season, the names will be placed in a hat and the "winner" gets the banner. If my kids are the "lucky" ones, they will be giving it to the coach. We don't have space for crap like that.

One of the reasons we chose to play with this league is because they don't schedule games on Sunday. So of course they scheduled the pictures for this Sunday (because obviously there isn't a game scheduled). We had a family powow tonight and decided we won't be participating because we would have to miss church. So we won't be in the team pictures, but that's how it goes. I was proud of them for making this decision because we did leave it up to them. We have friends that schedule their birthday parties around our kids (they have them on Saturdays when they would prefer to have them on Sundays, just so our kids can come). And I have friends that registered on National Scrapbook Day in May for a Saturday session instead of the Sunday session, just so I can come. I really appreciate this and I feel like if we are inconsistent, people won't continue to help us respect Sundays. And I think it's how we show God we really do get it and we respect him.

Despite the inauspicious start to the season, I really do hope the kids enjoy playing. I have to give up enough of my time for them to be able to do it and it means I will be hanging out with Henry, keeping him from eating rocks and grass, a lot for the next few months. I caught the little rascal splashing in the toilet for the first time tonight. It has begun ... but that is an issue for another post!

$2,000 later ...

2008-02-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

Wow! Last week was totally insane! We ended up calling Mr. Rooter, who told us we needed to install an access outside the house (all the houses around here were built in the 1950s and go through installing an access at some point and this had never been done to our house, since it was a rental before we bought it). So we deliberated but ended up signing a contract for $2,000 to get the access installed and the pipes cleaned. Mr. Rooter dug a hold just outside our front door and broke a hole in our clay pipes to run a snake and clear away enough roots for things to get through. He came back the next day with his supervisor, who ran a camera down the pipes and then he recommended replacing our entire pipes, which I knew was coming and we declined - until they used the scare tactic of showing us where the roots had gotten in through all the joints every 4 feet, (which we expected, since all the neighbors have had the same problems) but they told us we were fertilizing our front lawn with the waste from our pipes and so we signed on the dotted line for $6,000 to replace the main pipe from our house to the sidewalk and install an access and then Erik signed a waiver of our right to cancel the contract so they could begin work immediately. Then they left for another job and didn't come back that day. I sweated bullets all night because there was no way I wanted to take on a payment plan for this. I had a $2,000 check from an insurance claim that I had just made on half the fence and so I could come up with $2,000 (even though we still need a new fence, but still). It just didn't feel right and I got about four hours of sleep. I got up the next morning and ran to the neighbor's house, and she helped me look into our rights and getting out of the contract and found out we were only liable up to $750 for emergency work so then I felt better (Except, I still had a pipe that was broken just outside my front door and I could watch all of our sewage floating by. It was lovely.). I called someone else in for a second opinion, and they came at 1 pm and told me they could get rid of the roots for a year and install the access $1,200. Then Mr. Rooter showed up and they were both there at the same time and I had to fire one and hire the other with them both watching. It was stressful. Then Mr. Rooter fought with me over how much I owed him. At first he said $1,000 and I told him I wasn't paying more than $750. I knew my rights. Then he called his supervisor (who had brought the camera and was practically gleeful at the amount of work we "needed" done), who said he had done 85% of the work and we should pay $1,800. I said, "No way in heck." But I didn't say heck. And then I said, "We're gonna have a problem here." I called the supervisor and said, "What you've done is worth $500 to me." He was insulted and told me his guy's time was worth more than that. I said, "Too bad. Do you want a dissatisfied customer who is going to say a lot of bad things about you or should we cut our losses here?" I used that tip from my neighbor, and I was amazed that it worked. He said, "Fine. We'll call it even at $700." I said, "Fine." So it cost me $2,000 in the end. Erik brought me home ice cream and flowers for the first time ever, because he recognizes that although he has to put up with my mouth, it does get us out of things occasionally. But after the new plumbers cleaned the roots out, they saw that there are breaks in the tops of the pipes under the sidewalk and street and even though it's city property technically, we'll probably still have to pay for it. So we will need to pay $6,000 in a year or two to get the work done. It feels like we're paying for car and getting a pipe in our front yard, but at least I have the time to figure it out now. This pretty much took all week and I still had kid duties so by the end I could barely put a complete sentence together.

Thankfully, we had a weekend away at Windsor with friends and without the kids. It was a nice and much-needed break, but it did rain. We went to a couple wineries and took the tours, which we've never been able to do because we've always had the kids with us. Our friends weren't members and sampled wine. It was a strange feeling to live vicariously. I found myself asking, "How was that one? Did you like it?" and swallowing a lot. Anyway, it is strange to me that it is such a big business that we don't participate in. I asked one lady if they made anything nonalcoholic. She sarcastically said, "Yeah. Water." I would even be willing to pay $8 a bottle for a good grape juice but I guess it's not worth it to them. They told me grape juice was grown in the Central Valley.

Well, I hope to never have another week like the one I just went through but I'm glad we survived and came out OK. I called the insurance company and claimed the other half the fence and they're sending another $2,000, so now we can buy the materials, but unfortunately for Erik, it won't be enough to pay for labor so he's going to have to do the work.

Something funny is that when I was in the middle of it, I told Mom, "We don't need a titanium pipe! We just need a good enough one to get by," meaning we have a cheap, crappy house - why should we put in a shiny new pipe? I get everything at a discount, as you know. So she calls me back at 11:30 at night and says, "Dad was talking to his coworkers and everyone thinks it's ridiculous that you are getting a titanium pipe installed. Why can't they just use PVC?" I said, "Mom, I meant figuratively!" Hopefully Dad thought that was funny.

Sweet Weather in SoCal

2008-02-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

OK, so I didn't make it very far the last time I started blogging. This time I will be better - promise! That's cause I'm writing my sister Sarah every week while she's on her mission in New Zealand so I'm giving her the rundown of our weekly life anyway. It's always a little crazy, but it's never boring around here! So check in when you want and I'll try to keep the blog up-to-date this time.

The kids had lots of fun last weekend at the Lambs' house in Southern California. Melanie's baptism was nice and the weather was perfect - in the 70s. We hardly even left the compound. The Lambs are halfway through their remodel and it is turning out really nice. We had a rousing game of Apples to Apples with Erika and Caitlyn before they headed back off to Provo.

We are home this weekend and trying to get stuff together for our biannual bulky items pickup, which means we have to juggle kids and try and get our junk together but it feels so good when the garbage goes out! The weather has been great, although it's been a little windy some days, but I know we have nothing to complain about compared to those of you fed up with snow in Utah. We do pay the big bucks to live here, though!

Welcome to Emily's imagination

2006-09-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hi! Thanks for visiting. I am a stay-at-home mom scrapbooker who moonlights teaching classes at the local scrapbook store. I have a 6-year-old boy named Oliver who just started first grade and a 3-year-old girl named Lael who just started preschool. My son is in a bilingual Spanish program, which is pretty intense but he's learning Spanish and he's got a great accent. I am finally starting to have free time for the first time in six years and I am going to try to get some of my scrapbooking work published. Wish me luck!