Seasonal

Skipping Christmas

 

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Call me Scrooge, but I hate putting up the Christmas tree. Yes, of course, I am always happy when it is done and we are greeted by twinking lights in our living room for a whole month! (two, if I never get around to taking it down in January) But, c’mon what sadistic Martha Stewart came up with the tradition of putting away every knick knack in your house just to unload 6 huge boxes of junk. Is this really a necessary part of enjoying the holidays?

One of these days I will get the courage up to skip Christmas as I read about in John Grisham’s book.

Here is a picture of LG enjoying his Thanksgiving holiday. I am not trying to make him feel bad; I really am glad that he was enjoying some down time.

But, shouldn’t we all be able to enjoy our holidays, regardless of our gender?

We need an ACLU Christmas. We need to keep all of our National Holidays, yet, the week after we celebrate, we should have the ACLU version where the men do all the work that the women usually handle and the women act like the men (ie. sitting on the couch reading a book, playing football with our friends, watching sports on TV)

Think about it. Who does the work? We’ll start with Easter for the pure delight of making a point. Who buys the candy, who shops for those cute Easter outfits? Who makes sure that they get up at the crack of dawn to stage the fact that the Easter Bunny has visited (Abigail does read my blog now and so I have to be careful what I say here – I know she doesn’t believe in the Easter Bunny any more)

Next holiday – July 4th – Who buys and prepares the food and plans the outing? Really, all the men have to do is set off the fireworks..and is that really work?

Halloween – Who buys the candy, who tries to keep everyone from consuming the candy when you bought it the week earlier? Who makes the costumes? Who runs around like a mad woman on 10/31 making sure that all the preparations are accomplished for trick or treating, including the dinner, and making sure that you can somewhat tell what the kids are dressed up as, even under their coats?

Thanksgiving – who combs all the adds looking for the cheapest turkey? Who bakes the pies and the rolls and the, do you really want me to finish the food list? Who has to clean the house like a turkey with her head cut off to accomidate all the company? And, who is that actually sets that darn table? If all of that isn’t enough. Now, in American culture, we are expected to get up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving to make sure we get the best deals for the next holiday coming up.

and Christmas … I don’t think I have to explain the thought process.

I think I would really be willing to give up the two Woman holidays of the year (Valentine’s and Mother’s Day) to eliminate all the other holiday work throughout the year.

I know, I know, I am a whiner. It’s all about the memories we are making. I can’t help it that I prefer to make memories without working myself like a horse.

Not that you care, but I really wanted to add a picture of me in here of decorating the tree last night. Guess why I didn’t? I spared you the trauma of staring at my big fat bum. Every picture that was taken I was leaning over and picking something up, moving furniture, or plugging something in. Yep, you got it….working.

And were you wondering what LG was doing through all of the Christmas festivities – you got it – not working – unless you consider taking my picture work – which come to think of it – maybe he was working – staring at my bum really can’t be considered enjoyable. HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!

Oh, and I just added the bonus picture of Kitty Bear. I think she may feel like I do about this whole tree nonsense. Check her out; she’s staring it down.

Christmas Ornaments

I just found these darling ornaments by linking this site from Rita’s.

I love these great ornaments. They may really come in handy as replacements for Katie in New York, who put her Christmas tree up 2 weeks ago. And, she has two toddler sons. What was she thinking? I think that all of my girls are finally old enough to respect that Christmas ornaments break. Now, if I could just teach the cat to leave the tree alone, I may be motivated to put my tree up on Thanksgiving weekend like the rest of the country.

The Gratitude

Thanks to Liam’s mom for reading my blog! I don’t always acknowledge those who come to my blog, especially if I think that they are just looking for readership. But, for some reason, after reading Gina’s blog I think I like her. And even thought my craftiness can be quite said, I also liked the cute Thanksgiving craft that was posted on thewoodenporch, which I understood to also be Gina’s. Here is the photo.

Here is a link that Gina put on one of her recent posts. I found it fascinating. It is about Ronald Reagan’s visit to a church cannery in Ogden, UT. Wow, we belong to an awesome church. If everyone in this world were a member, it would be such a better place to live.

I have a lot to be thankful for today. And, I guess we will just call this my gratitude post. Everyone has to have one, right? Things to be grateful for right this minute: 1- I made a new blogger friend who also happens to be a stranger, for the first time. 2- I just read an article that reminded me that I belong to a church that is awesome and true. 3- I just had the sweetest phone call from a new member of our church who has overnight become a fast friend. 4- I also have been pondering all morning about our Family Home Evening last night. LG gave a lesson about gratitude that included this modern day scripture: (for those of you that are unfamiliar, the Doctrine and Covenants are recorded scriptural revelations given to the first Prophet of this dispensation, Joseph Smith.)

Doctrine and Covenants 78:19 And he who receiveth all things with athankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an bhundred fold, yea, more.

How cool is that scripture. Although, I am sure I have, I don’t ever remember reading it before. What a promise. If we are truly grateful for what we have, the Lord will bless us with a hundred fold things of this earth (So, this isn’t a blessing we have to wait for until the next life) He will bless us while we are on this earth.

So, I have made a promise to myself that I am going to try and write something comical in every post. That is the point of this blog: to make people laugh. This is going to be hard to do, but worth the challenge.

So, what do I have comical about gratitude? Well, last night at the end of our Family Home Evening lesson, (if you want to read more about Mormon’s having Family Home Evening read this exceptional talk by a latter-day Apostle) we combined our activity and refreshments. I had a big bag of gummy bears and told the girls that if they would tell me things that they were grateful for, I would throw them a gummy bear. LG quickly advanced this game to everyone opening their mouths and me trying to accurately toss the bears directly in. Boys make everything so much more fun.

So, the funny part…In the middle of all of this fun, LG started to feel ignored as the girls were getting all the candy. He said, “Wow, that gummy bear was so good, I am SO grateful for it. I wonder if the Lord will bless me a hundred fold.”

I replied, “Probably not. It doesn’t work that way. If you were truly grateful for that one gummy bear, you wouldn’t be wondering if the Lord would give you more because you would be happy with the one you just got.” LG conceded that I was correct, but I still chucked a handful at him. His gratitude wasn’t quite worth one hundred though.

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!

Take Me Home, Country Roads

I thought that you would all love a pic of me in my bathing suit! He he

Shown in pic. – Cousins Jarrett and Missy Gold, and their 3 adorable kids (Brighton, Aspen, and Rider) and us and two of the girls. I have no idea where Bella is, but I highly doubt she ran ahead. She may be coming up and over the hill, or hiding behind the vastness of my towel.

This is a pic that LG’s Uncle Dirk snapped when we were at Claytor Lake, VA over the 4th of July. I love the picture of all the green in the back. Behind us, over the small hilltop, is a massive lake…all the green is from behind the lake. There is at least a mile of lake between our backs and all those trees. Crazy, huh?

This is why they say, “Take me home, country roads.”

My next post is going to be our last trip to Claytor Lake over Labor Day. We paddled in the paddle boat and did Karaoke. If I can get the video to work, there is a funny one of LG singing like a sleezy lawyer….you have to try and catch it all from behind my laughter.

Happy Fetchin’ Halloween

This was a photo worth showing to everyone. And it even got me to blog an entry. Here is my cool brother-in-law Logan dressed up for Halloween. As he walked into our Halloween party last night he received a standing ovation. Swwwwweeeet!

He is a good look alike, huh? Can you believe this is his real hair…so funny because he really has very straight hair. If you are living in the stone age and need a reference to Logan’s hero,Napoleon Dynamite just click here.

Have a great Halloween!

Hoppy Easter


Here comes Peter Cottontail Posted by Hello

My sister Renee called this morning with somewhat disturbing news. O.k. it is only really disturbing if you are under 5 years old or a mom of someone who it, but here it is. Renee was so sad for her kids. I told her that she should write a letter and complain.

Renee had taken her three small children into the city of St. George for their community easter egg hunt.
Before the festivites were through, the teenager playing the Easter Bunny decided that, even though it was 42 degreees outside, he was just TOO hot to keep his costume on. He took his Easter Bunny head off right in front of all of the bright eyed children.

I think you will back me up when I say, this kid needed some serious on the job training. C’mon, do you think that Chuck E. Cheese would ever strip his head off in front of the birthday goers? NO WAY! What about the characters at Disneyland? They would be fired on the spot! and have no defense in their impending lawsuit. I mean, imagine it. Is Santa allowed to shed his fake beard in front of a line of eagerly waiting children? Do I have to answer that?

I can only speak for my niece and nephew: they were traumatized. 4 year old Tannon asked my sister, “Mom, why did the easter bunny take his head off? Why isn’t he real?” I just imagaine all of the children running around like chickens with their heads cut off when the easter bunny decided to strip down. “Oh, no, oh, no…the easter bunny lost his head.”

This news reminded me of a Maury Povich show that I saw years ago. The show was about people who had very interesting phobias. This one forty year old woman was deathly afraid of character costumes. For the dramatic effect, while this woman tried to explain her bizarre fear, the show had orchestrated an Easter Bunny onto the stage. Her reaction was explanation enough. As soon as she saw the bunny, she jumped up and over about four rows of the studio audience. She was terrified……she probably witnessed a bunny take his head off when she was just a wee-one too.

The Display


Fireworks…for me they represent the test of true love Posted by Hello

I should save this entry for Independence Day, but it is the one that I feel like writing about today.

On July 4, 1997, my husband proved his love for me. How did he do that, you ask? Well, pretty much all he had to do was stick around. My family would probably have been very successful at running anybody else off. Even after this night LeGrand stuck around to marry me on August 15, 1997.

My parents thought that it would be a lovely idea to invite LeGrand’s sister and her husband, and Jordan, LG’s little brother over for the 4th of July celebration. We lived directly above the Lavell Edwards Stadium, which hosts not only BYU football, but, also, the biggest fireworks display of the year, The Stadium of Fire. We could see the show from the backyard and we were all excited to get in on the action without paying for the tickets.

We had enough food to last the evening, and my family so generously provided the entertainment until the fireworks display began. How did they do that, you ask? Well, all my family had to do was basically be themselves and it was enough to send my soon-to-be in-laws into hysterics.

First, my mom decided that it would be more comfortable to pull out all of our family room furniture onto the lawn. Yes, may be embarassing to some, but we had to offer the best seat to the company. Then, my brothers commenced in lighting the firecrackers. This was a sight to see: a bunch of grown men acting like they were 8 years old again.

The night was topped off with the two events that my in-laws still speak of today. First, was a display of my father’s typical problem solving skills (it has to be BIG). When we ran out of matches to light the firecrackers, my dad decided to pull out the blow torch. My brothers then spent the rest of the night fighting over who would have the honor of lighting up the stuff.

My brother, Adam, decided to crown himself as the evening’s commentator. He would delight us all with the names of what kind of firecrakers were being lit. We then all headed up to the roof (a family tradition, that didn’t seem the least bit odd to me – I am desensitized). All 20 of us headed up, trying not to consider the people who lived upstairs from us. We invited them to join us, but only one took us up on the offer. We had the best show in the house and it was all free.

The award for the best entertainment of the night goes to Adam, when he said, “Now these fireworks are my very favorite…they are called the little sperm fireworks.”