LG

The Hubby’s Humor


Those of you that have been loyal readers from the beginning know that this blog was a gift to me from my husband for Valentine’s Day a few years back. It really has been one of the best gifts he has ever given me. One, I love to write and I use this blog all the time. (except for the year 2006) 😉 Two, this blog is a great therapeutic tool! And three, LG was able to use his skills in Computer Science (which he will adamantly oppose, saying that it doesn’t take computer skills to set up a blog) to gift this to me. Of course there is no better gift than giving of yourself.

Here is a picture of LG. He is the love of my life, which none of you care about, but look at his cuteness. Just looking at a picture of him makes me smile. LG was the one who thought of the name for my blog. “I’m so funny” came from my oft heard self description of my sad sense of humor. (If I was really funny, I wouldn’t have to declare it to everyone after telling a joke, right?) The other source of this blog’s name is from the dialogue that often takes place between LG and me. Whenever one of us gets a good joke in, we are both known to profess to each other, “I’m so funny.” Usually this will turn into a little bit of fun bantering between us; of course he always lets me have the last, “No, I’m so funny.” This is very kind of him considering that he really does have the quicker wit.

We also like to sometimes exclaim to one another, “You’re so funny!” “You’re so funny” can be said for two reasons. These reasons have never been officially discussed, but have just evolved over time and are simply understood by just the two of us. The first kind of “You’re so funny” is said in a de·rog·a·to·ry fashion. The meaning of the expression really being, “you’re NOT so funny.” The second instance where we will say “you’re so funny” is always in only the finest complimentary way. The trick with the “you’re so funny” expression is that the giver of the words has to deliver the phrase in a monotone fashion. The whole fun with saying, “you’re so funny” is making the recipient of the phrase try to figure out if the humor is being described as 1- that was bad! or 2- that was really good!

Last night LG gave me a point in case example of his quick wit. I just had to share. We were in bed having our usual late night chat. Directly after our nightly prayers, and right before falling to sleep sometimes we will engage in (NO, not that) conversation. We go over the happenings of the day, talk about our next day’s plans, and sometimes, rarely, LG will even venture into the world of sharing his true deep down feelings. LG was a little down last night. He said he was having self confidence issues. (which I am sure he will be happy that I have told the whole world today on my blog – and which will also mean that it will be a while before he dares share any more personal feelings) But this story is worth it and I HAVE to give you the background information or it just won’t be the same. I will conveniently leave out some other details, only because LG has threatened me. 🙂

Our conversation progressed last night by me pressing for the exact reasons he was down on himself. He told me a few things he felt and then I got the chance to dispel his negative thoughts. By the time I got done, I thought, “I should tell him some others things he is good at.” LG’s complete ignorance of my weak compliments led me to start using the usual backup stupid complimentary phrases, the last being, “And, you know that I think that you have the perfect amount of chest hair.”

You have to understand that this last compliment was given with a sweet kiss attached. And, what was his reply? “So do you.” How does he expect my pep talk to lead to any form of intimacy when all I could do was just crack up? In between my fits of laughter I got the last word of course, “You’re so funny!” And this time I am sure that my tone gave away the meaning of the phrase.

Last night, LG may have won the I’msofunny game. Happily in this case, I declare the war as never being over. Last night, LG was truly #2 “you really are so funny” and not #1, “you’re not so funny.” with those three quick words, “So do you.”

Maybe some of those writers in Hollywood could step aside and give LG a shot. I tell you what, “So do you”, blurted out in .001 seconds?! I would almost be proud of his joke if it wasn’t in reference to me having hair on my chest (which just in case you are wondering, I don’t) If I did, that wouldn’t be so funny, now would it?

California Fires

So, LG and I took the girls for a getaway to the Atlanta temple yesterday. It’s a three hour drive each way. We left very early to get a jump start and it was a typical Southern Fall foggy morning.

Between navigating for LG, taking care of the kids in the car, and making the 7 soccer party calls from my cell phone, my mind wandered from the road. I looked up to see a wall of “smoke”. I exclaimed, “Honey, there’s a fire, slow down.”

Yes, I’m a Californian and grew up among frequent fires. LG turned to me and said, “Go home hippie.”

He didn’t really say that but that’s not the point. Our conversation just now went something like this.

Me: “Well, aren’t fog and smoke from the same element anyway?”

“No, Fog is water; smoke is pollution, you hippie.”

“What are you talking about you redneck, smoke is not pollution.”

The Master of Folk Art

Here is my birthday present from LG. I saw these kitchen canisters on the 75% off shelf at Cracker Barrel last week. I slyly told LG to tell his mom to get them for me for Christmas. Lo and behold, I didn’t have to wait that long. THANK YOU LG. You mastered my folk art wish list today. I LOVE IT!

I was very happy this morning with my surprise. I thought that you were going to get me that body spray I have been asking for from Target, but these canisters were way better. Good sneakiness honey. Now you can tell your mom to get me that Duchess body spray that I want for Christmas instead. (According to this link I shouldn’t waste my time, but as you all know you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet, and I love the scent of this stuff – The blogger also explains why I can’t find the item online to link it) I guess you won’t have to tell your mom LG because she can just read my blog. he he I love this “wish list” feature of the blog!

I love the idea of these canisters being in my kitchen (the place I spend the most time besides my bed). They will act as a constant reminder of the three greatest blessings in my life: Faith, Family and Freedom. How beautiful. I also love the style of these canisters. I am totally into folk art. Someday I am going to buy myself some authentic art. Or I can wait for LG to do it now that I’ve mentioned it on my blog wish list.

I also love the memory of being at the Cracker Barrel in Morristown when I found these. We had met my in-laws there halfway. We do this often when swapping off the kids for time at grammy’s and papa’s. It was Sophia’s birthday and we had already celebrated her special day on Sunday. She had spent two days with Duane and Faye and we were meeting to have a birthday dinner and exchange the kids back. Duane and Faye had taken them for a visit so that LG and I could discuss our future plans. I was distraught because with all the bar news ongoings I had forgotten to bring her a little something special for her actual birthday.

LG quickly comforted me with, “Don’t worry, all the girls love to shop at Cracker Barrel, I will just give her some money.” After dinner we all looked and looked for that perfect birthday toy. Everyone took turns suggesting to Sophia what would be in her budget of $10. Sophia only wanted the higher priced items. Abigail took Sophia over to the clearance side of the store and they came running back, “Mom, mom, come and see what Sophia wants to get.” Abigail informed me that it would cost under $5. (which is pretty amazing considering she is in 3rd grade and did the 75% off math for the original $10 item)

The item was a cute princess tiara wall hanging with shelf for the included mirror, brush, powder and the rankest smelling perfume ever. Of course I was sick for the next three days as all the girls sprayed it all over the house until I finally decided to hide it. Sophia was thrilled! She had found something nice for 75% off. These girls have been trained to find a deal! It was a proud parenting moment.

Not quite as proud as a few days ago when we were at Wal-Mart in the candy aisle. I was talking to LG on my cell phone and looking for single packaged peanuts as the girls ran ahead to pick out some candy. Bella came running back and questioned,”Mom, what is our budget for candy?” LG, with a chuckle, said in my other ear,”Did she just ask you what her candy budget is?”

Here is a photo of Bella playing the the Styrofoam from my birthday package. Bella has been begging to get on the computer and play Arthur as I have been typing this entry. I told her to hang on a few minutes longer so that I could type a story about her. She asked me to read it to her. She wants me to make the correction that it was Abigail that sent her back down the long Wal-Mart aisle to “ask mom what our candy budget is”

The Gold

“Vote for Abigail and she’ll give you some GOLD!” Abigail came up with her very own slogan so that she could run for Student Council. And, here is a poster made from her very own hands. I must say that LG sure did give our children a nice last name. When I ran for student council all I could come up with for slogans were “Vote for Alice in Lancerland” and “Where there’s A. Wills, there’s a way.” The latter was stolen by my older brother, Adam…you see, his name starts with an A also.

Well, Abigail’s kindergarten teacher surely led Abigail onto the right path with all that Irish talk. You can’t see it, but in her top right corner, Abigail drew a pretty detailed leprechaun.

I guess I have come full circle in my life. I thought that the world was over when I didn’t win my campaign for Student Body President at good old CHS, but when Abigail showed interest in 3rd grade Student Council, I was thrilled. I don’t necesarily want her to win because I know it may go to her head. I also don’t want her to lose because of course I never want her to be sad. I just want her to experience life to the fullest and everyone has to run for Student Council at least once. And, Abigail running as young as she is has been really nice because you should hear all the responsibility talks we have been able to have with her.

The cutest was to hear from LG (who never ran for student council in his life), but amazingly understands the meaning of it, “Abigail, do you know what the kids in your class deserve from you if your elected?” Abigail, “I don’t know.” LG, “Well, you are going to have to be extra responsible and be nice to everyone and listen to them and represent all the people in your class. You will have a big responsibility and you will need to live up to it.”

I imagined the entertaining end of the story with LeGrand saying, “Abigail you never want to dissapoint your constintuents.” Abigail, “What’s a constinuant?”

Monkey Hugs

When Abigail was about three, she quit wanting to go through the trouble to give us nighttime hugs and kisses. I don’t know how it started, but Abigail came up with a new tradition: Monkey Hugs.(It probably started when Abigail was monkeying around – hence the term Monkey Hugs)

So, every night for about four years, the girls would give us each a monkey hug by jumping on our backs. We really liked this tradition. It made an easy transition from nightly prayers to bedtime bliss. The ritual started on our knees by the kids’ beds, and advanced to them on our backs, and ended at us dumping them off our back into their bed.

For some reason the tradition died down. Probably when we started having family prayer in the family room. But tonight, after our prayer, Abigail decided to jump on her dad’s back. Then the Sophia and Bella joinedin. I grabbed the camera off the shelf. I had to hurry because what you can’t see in this picture is LG begging like a baby girl for them to get off his back….those new wood floors were way too hard on the knees.

The Family Room Fairy Gets Lucky

So the family room fairy saga continues. The family room fairy only motivated the kids to clean twice.

So tonight, I got a really great idea. It was time to go to bed and the family room was a mess. In the ideal world the kids would keep the room clean throughout the day. You know it’s not a hard concept: get one toy out, put it away before you get another on out. Well, I guess that this concept is way too advanced for any child under eight. I have not been able to get any of my three trained in this theory. Although, if I had to choose one child who was the best at keeping things clean it would have to be Bella. She definitely seems to get the most satisfaction from cleaning.

Anyhow, on with my story. So, I can’t get the kids to keep the room clean throughout the day and I refuse to try and get them to cooperate with me for longer than one hour a day…way too frustrating for me, not to mention the three little pigs. “This little piggie dumped out all the paints, this little piggie smashed cereal into the rug……etc, etc, all the way home.”

Today the mess was really bad since the girls were home sick and we had Halloween yesterday and they had free reign on the Halloween candy all day. And if you were wondering, the sick was just diarrhea and so I didn’t think that it warranted keeping their candy from them. Can you say, “candy wrappers everywhere.”

So, tonight, my big idea…

Me: “Girls, I think that if you don’t clean that mess up in the next ten minutes I will give some of your Halloween candy to the Family Room Fairy.”

This great idea evolved. For every minute I had to spend cleaning after they utilized their ten minutes, the family room fairy would get 10 pieces of their candy.

So, as you can see from the pic. the family room fairy will be surprised tonight with 30 pieces of candy. I really spent 10 minutes cleaning. Look at the trash that I gathered, not to mention the rest of the things I had to clean. And, a lot of the trash was sucker sticks that I had to pry from the carpet.

I will kindly represent the children tonight and beg of the fairy to allow the children to earn their candy back tomorrow night…ingenious, huh?

It’s too bad that Abigail has discovered my blog and loves to read it. Tonight she got a real chuckle with the fact that she knows that I am the family room fairy. I told her that she shouldn’t be laughing because I can eat her candy a lot faster.

Happy Halloween Candy eating!

Smokey

 
After reading Lindsey’s blog about bleeding orange I remembered that I had some pretty good pictures of the girls celebrating LG’s UT Law graduation. Here are just two of those pictures.

This is a picture of Bella with her orange and white pom pom and Abigail with Smokey. This story is about Bella and Smokey (UT’s one and only Vol mascot), but, as you can see, there is no picture of Bella WITH Smokey.

You see, Abigail tried to take Bella up to see Smokey, but Bella (my toughest daughter by far) choked halfway up the bleachers. Abigail was bewildered because she was trying to hurry to get to Smokey on time before Smokey moved on, and Bella just froze. I was watching them all the way and because of my prior experience with big stuffed animals, I knew from afar that Bella may be having issues.

My little sister Renee hated Chuck E Cheese when she was small. For all I know, she still does.

Well, anyhow, I had to run up and retrieve Bella from Abigail’s care, so that Abigail could hurry and get this photo. Before I was even able to snap the photo, I had to take a very anxious Bella back to the other side of the Colliseum to her father so he could protect her from the big bad mascot.

The rest of the evening Bella kept her very vigiliant watch on Smokey and kindly asked to go home whenever he got too close. We were trying every kind of reasoning to teach Bella that the big stuffed dog would not hurt her. The first reasoning being just that: he is just a big stuffed dog. Nothing was working. I have to admit that my best 3 year old reasoning was this: “Bella, that is just Smokey, he is related to Chuck E Cheese. You remember ChuckE from Sophia’s Birthday party, don’t you? He was so nice. You danced with him and the other kids. Well, Smokey is ChuckE’s cousin.”
This seemed to bewilder Bella more than anything. She was probably trying to figure out how a stuffed dog and a stuffed mouse could actually be related, but then again, maybe not. Now, whenever we see a big stuffed anything ranging from the ChikFilA cow to the Hardee’s Star, the girls always immediately holler, “Bella, look there’s another one of ChuckE’s cousins.

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$100 Bonus
 

Here is my traffic violation in art form.

A few weeks back I received my first traffic violation in 13 years. If you are at an intersection and all the cars in front of you are waiting for the red light to turn green so that they can proceed directly through, it is not lawful to turn right into the gas station next to you to avoid the intersection. It is called exactly that…avoiding an intersection, and it is against the law…WHO knew?

Well, I was pretty bummed, but was delighted when I got home and LG told me that he may be able to get the ticket revoked by the traffic court judge. So, I was even more delighted when LG went with one of his boss’s last week and in my behalf did exactly that. It was the first time since coming to law school that I finally got one little perk!

So, last night, we are going over our budget and trying to figure out how in the world we are going to come up with another $7,000 to pay for another bar class and bar test. (Why do they call it a bar anyway – that sounds like LG is going to go and take a drinking class – which if he wasn’t a Mormon, he might) Needless to say, we were having a good amount of frustration. LG said to me,”Alice, I am done with the law, I have got to grow up and provide for my family. We should have called this law school thing a wash a long time ago. We just keep forking out the cash and all it has done for us is provide one $100 bonus in getting you out of a traffic violation.”

I then replied, “Well that was one powerful $100 bonus to me.” The power of being untouchable on the roads is a pretty nice perk! Now, I just can’t get a ticket for another 30 days.

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Far more exceeding and eternal

On Friday, we got the very not expected news that LG will have to take the bar for the 2nd time! So, we have a choice: 1-Be defeated or 2-Move forward with faith. I thought that this picture was a great way to represent the notion of moving forward with faith.

Here are two sisters enjoying each others company while walking home from the Mechanic’s on Friday. They weren’t worried about the fact we had to walk home because our car was in the shop for the second time in the same week…they both found dandelions to pick and liked showing them to each other. In fact, they had no idea that a dandelion is a weed. They think that they are pretty flowers and always pick them and bring them to me whenever they see them.

Children are a wonderful blessing in keeping a positive attitude (something I have been working a lot on lately) I guess the Lord has decided to test me in whether or not I am serious about changing my negative ways…he sure has given me a lot of challenges lately.

The good news is I finally feel that I have passed the husband test. I can truly say that I love LeGrand no differently, even with the disappointing news. I have found myself loving him more and for the FIRST time in 10 years I truly believe in him, even at the hardest time to do so. It feels so good. It is worth this challenge just to feel the way I do.

So, as for the title of this entry. Taken from, believe it or not, Sunday’s Sunday School lesson. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 & 4:17-18

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body…For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are
eternal.