Play Power

I'm supposed to be packing for our big spring vaca trip to Lake Powell, but that seems overwhelming, so I'm taking a break and posting instead. We've had a busy few days around here.


First, Nixon had the lead in his school play. Here he is as Finn O'Grady, a poor Irish boy who wants to win the hand of a fair lass in marriage, but must first learn to tell a tale. He doesn't know how to tell stories, but 3 leprechauns appear to teach him how. They teach him by telling 3 painfully long stories of their own, each one longer than the one before. At last, Finn gets to tell this girl's mom his own tale. It is about a sheep. He talks another boy into being the sheep. He walks around him, pulls on his "tail" (handkerchief) and the tail pulls off of the sheep.

Now imagine that you have already endured 1 1/2 hours of 4th and 5th graders acting in one of the dumbest things ever written. It's here! The big climax, the moment that will make all of the practices and costumes and work worth it. Here it is, the big punchline of the show: Imagine ...the tail comes off ...

Finn: "The End."
Mother Flatherty: "That's it? That's the longest story you could come up with?"
Finn: "Well, Mother Flatherty, the tale would have been longer, but it broke off!"

hahaha

Nixon naturally, was darling. For more pictures, see this.

Friday was the first day of spring break. My laurels, Nixon and Easton, and I went to volunteer at a bowling tournament for Special Olympics. It was super fun! We had a great time, even after this dis concerning start to the day:

Volunteer Coordinator (to a group of 5 adults who walked in after us): "Are you here to volunteer or are you athletes?" They were there to volunteer.

Anyway, the games in the morning were children - Easton of course, made 5 new best friends, here is one of them:
I suppose I need to get busy on the packing thing. Have a great day!

Let's Raise Our Glasses ...

of Sprite in a toast to Rio. No, not that one that dances on the sand, oh Rio Rio, across the dusty land.

My tribute this evening is not to the 1st boy band of my childhood, but to my gotta have it once a week, can't believe how good this is, favorite place to eat. I speak, of course, of Cafe Rio.

I'm all about the steak taco, but I've never tried anything I don't like. The salads are yummy, the burritos are filling (and 2 meals at least!), my kids LOVE the quesa-dillas even though they are too old to get them free.

I wish we had one in Park City, but Salt Lake is only 20 minutes away, so I won't complain. There are 2 locations programmed in my cell phone so that I can call my order in when I'm in a hurry.

Feel free to toast your similar obsessions, whether they be for Cafe Rio, or a similar, although surely inferior place!

Spring Un-sprung

I regretfully must retract this.

Break out the winter layers again! It is being replaced by this:

That's my backyard at 10am today.

The most redeeming thing about Park City snow in March (besides the fact that I have a great excuse to ski tomorrow) is that it is apparently magic snow. See how it collects everywhere but the roads, driveways, and sidewalks? Hopefully that statement is not tomorrow's retraction. Has it really only been a week since I was here?:

I was lucky, lucky, lucky to get to attend the General YW Leaders Open House in Salt Lake yesterday. (It's a training day for young women leaders). It got me thinking about how my wardrobe lacks a pastel color suit. Just kidding! It was inspiring. Now that the church posts basically everything ever said at these meetings on line, the only notes I really take are of things that come to me that I need to be doing ...of course, I have lots to be doing differently. When I go to stuff like this or conference, I try to review the MANY things I have written down and come up with 3 things I'm really going to focus on. Here are my 3 from yesterday's training:

1. I need to PAVE the way for the Spirit to be in my home. My time in Primary helped me understand my responsibilities to teach the gospel in my home. My time in Young Women's is doing the same for my understanding of my role in setting the tone and atmosphere in our home. Anyway, I've got lots of improving to do here.

2. Sister Dalton and Beck had scriptures marked by categories that YW might need to hear - identity, standards, leadership, the Holy Ghost. The scriptures were all listed in the back together, but also color-coded with post-it flags. So you need a scripture to help a YW understand who she is, you can just open to any of the little red flags. I LOVE it! I'm going to work personally on it and also I think we'll do some marking together with the girls and their own scriptures at Girl's Camp.

3. Prayer is our most powerful tool. We are good about family prayer and study, and personal prayers at night are pretty easy for me to remember, but I'm super bad about starting my day and forgetting to kneel by myself and pray, and let's face it - isn't the beginning of the day when we need it most? So I'm going to work on that. I've been thinking about doing prayer sticks in YW where every week a girl's name gets pulled and the girl giving the opening prayer prays for the name on the stick. They talked about the power of girls praying for each other, and so I'm making sticks today.

That's a lot of rambling. If you're still with me, thanks. Thanks to all you commenter's also - it really is fun to read your comments!

Satisfaction Guaranteed ...

or your money back! No, I'm not referring to a guarantee on the valuable time you spent reading this blog (that you can never get back!). I'm referring to the incredible, amazing seduction of the INFOMERCIAL.

Fess' up! What have you been sucked into buying, only to realize it was a waste of money, and too humiliated to call and demand your money back, decided to take the loss as a life lesson?

When Sara was about 5, she became obsessed with the Shawala Wash. (OK, that's so old no one wants anything to do with that name and it is no where on the internet, but this is similar) She was convinced that our lives would be vastly improved by owning one. She begged, I'm pretty sure she tried to dial the 800 number herself, she cried. When Nixon and Easton were about the same age, the object of their affection was the Pops-A-Dent. Never mind there was not a single tiny dent on our car, they were convinced we needed one. Oh the power of TV advertising! I was a mean mom and never granted either one of these wishes. They all should have asked dad first, he's been lured into several of these amazing TV specials.

My downfall in the world of worthless junk from the TV was the Perfect Pancake. The kids begged and begged. I finally relented, I mean, who doesn't want to make perfect pancakes?! I recommend this product to anyone who lives ALONE! It makes one pancake at a time, and not quickly! How many people with 3 kids can make breakfast ONE pancake at a time? Needless to say, the perfect pancake has long since gone to the DI. (That's Utah-speak for Goodwill)

I bring this up because I am the proud new owner of this. This is what happens when you leave your husband alone for 5 days! I promise to eat my words and apologize when his abs turn rock hard. Until then, I'm counting down my 90 days ...

Where, oh where did my weekend go?

Is it just me, or are the weekends going by faster every week? I'm so not ready for school to start again tomorrow! How many days until summer?

Friday night, Easton went to a birthday party, Nixon to a friend's house, Sara to dance, Geoffrey and I went to dinner with his sister's and a movie. Saturday started EARLY with a temple trip for us, dance for Sara, some house cleaning, work for Geoffrey, watching one of my young women play volleyball, a hockey game for Nixon (complete with a goal!), the young women general meeting broadcast, and Sara went out with friends. Whew! It was nice to have 2 spiritual experiences during the day - the broadcast was amazing and always helps get me even more excited for conference!

Here's a shot of the goal - that's Nixon in the yellow pullover and red helmet. Look close, and you'll see the puck in the net too!

Sunday was full of church and meetings (2 of us in leadership positions is killing our Sunday downtime!). It's been a long time since we had a Sunday without company for dinner, so we took advantage and took our dinner out for a picnic. We drove up towards Daniel's Summit, but stopped before we got there at a little park. We ate, hiked up a small trail, and played some family football. It was so great to get outside and spend some fun time together - we needed it! Pretty much, the football game consisted of Geoffrey and whomever was on his team at the moment destroying the rest of us. This picture pretty much sums it up:

Well, only 5 more days until the next weekend, let's hope it lasts a little longer!

Just one more day ...

I'll just stay in California one more day ... That's how my trip that was supposed to end on Monday ended with us coming home late Wednesday night (or early Thursday, however you want to describe it!). I could have one more day-ed myself for 3 weeks, but alas, Nixon has the lead in the school play next week and couldn't miss anymore practices! Trip pics here!

No worries, I'm grateful for every second I spent there (thanks honey for letting me go and thanks Steph and Talon for letting me invade). It was so great!

When we lived in California, I think I was pretty good at neglecting housework when the beach or Disneyland called us, but I'm not sure I searched out every spare minute to spend time with my friends and just relax with them. Was I taking them for granted? Shouldn't we all live more like we are on vacation and less like we do? Would we be better at going out of our way for our kids to do the things that bring them joy?

Speaking of bringing joy to our children ...

Possibly the greatest moments of their lives! Yea for Becky who offered to sign us into Disneyland (and extend our trip one more day!). Boo to all you crazy moms buying your kids Jedi outfits and making signs so your kids will get chosen to be Jedis! Jedi Training Academy is as competitive as beauty pageants for toddlers! For the record ...since Nixon and Easton were perfectly content to do NOTHING but sit at the Jedi Training Academy until they were chosen, I did break down and buy some overpriced Disney markers so they could make themselves little signs. It worked, so our 3rd try (1st with signs though!), they were both chosen.

Anyway ...I loved seeing the people I did, I wish I'd had a few one more days to get to talk more to some of you, I can't wait to come back. I'm going to spend more time looking around me here, asking what I would do if I came here on vacation, who would I be dying to spend more time with, and I'm going to live like that a little more!

Supermarket Sweep

When you hear the beep, think of all the fun you'd have on Supermarket Sweep!

When Tim lived with us, he and I LOVED to watch Supermarket Sweep. We never missed it and I don't know why we never tried to get on it, we would have rocked! We were always yelling at the TV, "don't get that, you're wasting your time!" So last night, I had my own little supermarket sweep:

24 boxes of cereal for $16.00!!

When we lived in California, my in-laws were always trying to say how much cheaper the cost of living was in Utah. That's turned out to be mostly false, (you pay way more for some things here, but I'll save a rant about pedicures for another post), but CEREAL goes on sale cheap all the time. So I'm filling my car to take to a great lady who I know feeds the priests in her ward cereal every Sunday night!

The best part of the supermarket trip was that there was only one check stand open, and the lady rung it up wrong to start with. So the manager had to come over and void it all out so she can start over. Then the manager had to come unlock her drawer because the checker had already put my coupons in the drawer, and all the while, the line of people completely ANNOYED with me is growing longer and longer. I don't care - all that cereal for $16.00 - TOTALLY WORTH IT!