Laying Out My Weaknesses

Okay FINE! I am finally posting.

I don't know why I haven't felt like blogging lately, I haven't even felt like reading blogs really and that has never happened before! There are things I've been thinking about and the thought keeps popping up: "You should blog this before you forget about it!"

But then I forget about it.

Okay fine, I DO know why I haven't felt like blogging...

A couple weeks ago my husband and I were asked to speak at a youth Standard Night. The Bishop asked us to talk about (get this:) media, the computer, phones, texting, Facebook--that kind of thing. The irony in this is hysterical. Since I am completely addicted to my computer.

So I started preparing and I started reading and I started feeling really, really...guilty. I was reading quotes about "idleness" and being accountable to God for how we use our time, and how Satan tries to minimize the importance of our bodies by sucking us into a life of "unreality" instead of living a REAL important life and enjoying the time and people we have right in front of us. Ugh.

So, although the point of it wasn't to say that the computer (or phones, or texting or whatever) is BAD, it is highly addictive and we have to be careful about not "becoming a slave" to it.

So I've tried to make some changes--do you know how hard it is to be addicted to something thats right in the middle of your living room, that calls to you, that says "just sit down for ONE minute, take a little break, its okay..."?! Its hard I tell you. I've also found that I don't know what to do with myself a lot of the time. Okay I won't sit on the computer, my house is clean, now what do I do? Is that not completely pathetic?! (Please don't answer that, I'm going through a very rough time...)

So I've tried to get organized, come up with ideas, make lists of things to do and whatnot; and its starting to sort of work, I think. Yeah. You know, I think Satan is pretty smart because although I haven't had a real sort of physical addiction to anything (except maybe Mountain Dew), I think a mental addiction could be just as hard to break. Its like my brain is fuzzy, its like every time I stay away from the computer I have a million questions that need to be answered by google RIGHT NOW...

So anyway, thats about it I think. I'm working on using my time better and not being completely consumed by the convenience of the internet. I did have a great post to write about my thoughts on Pinterest, but somehow this came out instead. Sorry. Next time we'll get to the addictive qualities of Pinterest. See its related!

Masquerade!! People's Faces on Parade!

It was my sister's 30th birthday at the beginning of the month, since she has a long history of kind of sucky birthdays her husband REALLY wanted to throw her a big party. It was a little bit of a rough go, trying to find a place to have it, trying to figure things out and get stuff done, my sister made her costume--it was AMAZING--but that takes time, so it was a little stressful for her I think.

You guys have to know, that my sister is one of my very best friends, I was really hoping this party would be awesome for her! It was a masquerade ball, so everyone should have some kind of mask and be dressed up. I LOVE dressing up and I LOVE Halloween parties, I wish I'd taken some pictures of the food (shame on me!), because there were intestines and worms and eyeballs and all kinds of awesome stuff! She had the party in a dance studio, so we even got some fun dance instructions too! We set up a little backdrop and had fun props and took pictures and really just laughed and danced and had a great time! I hope she knows how much I love her and that I at least had a fantastic time! :D Here's a couple pictures from the party:



This is my costume, I did a kind of "steampunk" costume. Its a little bit victorian with a punk twist, lots of clocks and cogs and stuff. Google it, I love it! :) And YES, I did make my costume!


This is my brother in law, he was a pirate (with a leprechaun belt...) and apparently the top hat just finished things up. :)


This is my beautiful sister! Doesn't she look awesome?! She really seriously made that dress! And you'll have to check her hair out in the other pictures, it was so great (I know I don't sound humble, but I did her hair too and was freaking out it looked so cool! haha)!!


I know she's cut off in these pictures, you'll have to click on them to see them full size!






This is my studly husband, I LOVED his costume. He kinda looks like a soda jerk, and I wish his mustache would have stayed on, but seriously so cute!


This is the backdrop, pretty fun right?



I made this cake special for my sister, its a lemon cake with raspberry filling, it was like five layers thick! haha

Sometimes This Happens With Short Hair

Just realized how much I look lesbian-ish today...

...don't ask how my posing reflects that, that part is just because I'm weird.

I Like Wasting Time Apparently

So its happened. I must have been super bored or my blood sugar was low or something but I decided to join...

...pinterest.

If you're on pinterest, you totally know what happened. If you're not you'll think this is totally dumb.

So for those of you WEIRDO's who've never even heard of pinterest, let me try to explain it simply. Have you ever been browsing blogs and come across a great tutorial or idea that you loved and wanted to bookmark for future reference? I don't usually bookmark sites, so I would normally email myself the link and hope I'd remember about it when I actually needed to use it. Well, with pinterest when you find that great idea, you "pin" it to a "board" about whatever interest you have and its all in one place for you. So lets say I have a board about cake decorating (which I dooo), if I come across a cake I like the style of or whatnot, I can pin it and find it super easy for future reference.

Now past the simple part, you also get to see what all your friends are pinning, so thats super fun and good for more ideas. PLUS you get to see what EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is pinning so even MORE fun. PLUS (yes theres more!) if you want specific ideas for specific things--like last night I was looking up "halloween food" for a party--you can type a search in for that and get thousands of ideas. Its awesome.

Also, its addicting.

All of a sudden not only do you want to pin ideas-- you want to SEARCH for more and more things to pin because its fun and its cute and people like what you pin and you feel super validated when someone sees your pin and RE-pins it because they like it too. Its like the cool kids group for craftiness or something.

I don't know if this is a post telling you to join pinterest or warning you of its evils...I'll leave that up to you! :)

Swass and All That Too

So this week on Blossoming Bloggers, there's a recipe for fish tacos and the prompt is:

"Tell about one of your favorite dates you have ever been on."

Hmmmm. Favorite date huh...honestly, I got married right out of high school. Like five months after high school, and I was engaged those five months, so those kind of dates aren't real...datey; mostly just making out...heh heh...yeah...

Before I met my husband, all my other dates were in high school and you know thats not the same as dating as an adult. Not that the dates I went on then were BAD, they just were lame high school dates. :)

When my husband and I were dating, they were good dates, but pretty normal: dinner, movie, putt-putt golfing, baseball game...and then we were engaged...haha

This is the only story I can think of to tell you:

For my husband's thirtieth birthday we decided to invite some friends and go play lazer tag. We were super excited about it because...well, because lazer tag is freaking awesome, thats why. So we get there and get all geared up and ready to play, I'm pretty sure we played guys against girls. We're in the arena, its dark, the black lights are going and we are running around all crazy ninja style trying to be awesome and get the most points and MUTILATE the boys. We played several games until we were so hot and sweaty and exhausted we were done.

We go back and hang up our vests and guns and I turn around and look at my dear sweet husband. He has sweat lines all down his back, across his chest and under his moobs (man boobs). I looked at him and all I could say was, "You're really lucky this isn't a first date, because I'm not sure I would have gone out with you again..." and busted up laughing.

So there, not only do you get a fun story, there's some sound advice for dating:

Don't do a physically sweaty date for a few weeks, until you're sure they REALLY like you. And it helps if you have a few kids together already... :)

Lunch Bunch

Okay, for this week's Lunch Bunch, the question is:

If you could address a graduating high school class, what would you say?

Boy, do I want to go short and sweet or long and boring? Hmmmmm, I'll probably think I'm doing short and sweet, and end up with long and boring...

Its different being general to everyone or even just specifically for boys or girls. If I was just talking to girls, I would say BE NICE TO EACH OTHER, working together women can do amazing things--but put against one another we can be seriously awful.

One thing I have tried to have as a motto is: You will always feel bad about doing something wrong, but you will NEVER be sorry you did what was right.

I think I love this Mother Theresa quote though:

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

And I think that about sums it up. :)

What would YOU tell them?

Schedule Schmedule

My kids are just going back to school today. Our district had a strike and they were out of school all last week and all this week until today. Now they're back and I can start that whole worrying about my kindergartner all over again. Its lovely.

But at least we can hopefully start our "school schedule" now, you know the one that says I should have showered by now...

I suck at keeping schedules.

I surely like to make lists and plans but thats about as far as I get most of the time. And I love it if I accidentally do something so I can cross it off. Thats awesome.

This is about what my day was like with all the kids home (in picture form):

It was craziness I tell ya.

This is how it is now with only the boys home:

A whole lotta this. Why are boys so gross?

I Like Everything But I Like The Computer Best

Hi guys. Yup, I'm posting two whole days in a row! Can you believe it?!

Anyway, I was contacted by the bloggers who started Blossoming Bloggers and was asked if I wanted to do a Lunch Bunch post. All it is, is sharing a recipe and a prompt question. You can click over there to see the recipe, the question I asked was:

"Do you make time for hobbies and interests outside of being a mom and how do you do it?"

I'm supposed to write an answer to it as well, but I'm more interested in knowing how you guys make time for your interests--thats why I asked the question! heh

Since I have about a million and one interests (I'm easily amused....look a butterfly!!), I try and stick to things that are beneficial to my family (like decorating my house for cheaper than buying stuff) or things that I truly love so that the time I do use away from my family is worth it.

I've always liked photography, but never had an opportunity in high school or such to pursue it much, after I started having kids, I was of course taking pictures of them as much as possible. I've always loved art and drawing and painting, but to pull out supplies is messy and the time it takes to paint can be ridiculous when you have small children. Photography is instantaneous for the most part. *Click*--you have art. Its sometimes hard to go back to drawing, even though I miss it. Besides the fact that photoshop also fulfills that artistic need I have. One thing I've done this year to encourage my photography hobby was to join a 52 week project, each week we get a new prompt and have to take a picture for the theme within the time frame. Its fun because its not just pictures of my kids and it stretches my imagination, I've loved it. (If you want to check out my project, you can go to my photography blog here.)

I have lots of interests that I've put aside until my kids are older, like quilting and serious sewing and I mentioned painting as well. One of the interests I find doable with little kids is reading, we can even do it together sometimes! I made it a goal to read 50 books this year and will be finished with that goal within two more books. Exercising is another interest of mine, although I've fallen in and out of that so much. My husband and I started doing the "Insanity" work out, I got about four weeks into it, without seeing very good results. My goal now is to just do something active every day with my kids, and hopefully that will be a good start.

My biggest interest is the computer, so I encourage growth in that area by spending as much time as humanly possible on it... And I'm interesting in being extremely rich, but just haven't quite got it down yet.

Alright then, obviously since this is all about me, I could go on and on... :) But really, let me know how you make time to grow your talents and keep your interests...well, interesting!

What is HAPPENING?!

Dude. It isn't even 11am and I am ready for this day to be over.

Our school district is striking, today is the first day of no school. So of course I want to sleep in. Do the kids get the memo? Of course not.

I'm laying in bed, and my one year old climbs up to me, and promptly throws his tiny bowling ball hard head right into my closed eye. There was a flash of light, I'm surprised I didn't have a vision or something.

I decide to kick him out and stay in bed and read to recover. He comes up again and promptly throws one of those hard cardboard baby books. RIGHT AT THAT SAME FREAKING EYE. I have a big old lump there and it hurts to blink. I've never had a black eye before, we'll see if my very first is caused by a one year old baby. Kristina, maybe you are right.

I decide to go downstairs in an attempt to not be mauled anymore. The kids are fighting, they are screaming. Besides being tired, hurt, annoyed and frustrated, Aunt Flo came to visit yesterday, so I'm also an evil witch.

Then the phone rings. Its the dentist office, wondering if we're going to make our appointment that started 10 minutes before. Uhhhhhh, I thought it was tomorrow. I had to have told her "I am so sorry!!" fifteen times and she never once said it was okay, she was mad at me. I feel like crap.

I'm cramping. My face hurts. My kids are being crazy, wild animals. One of my children screams at least every two minutes on cue. Someone please make it stop...

School Blues

I sent two of my kids off to school today. My oldest loves school, she's excited for school, she's responsible and I'm not worried about her at all. My #2 is starting Kindergarden and I AM FREAKING OUT.

You have to understand a couple things about her. First of all, she's tiny. And I mean seriously TINY. Like my three year old is bigger than her, like she's almost six and can seriously wear 3T clothes on her skinny butt. It makes me nervous that she'll be picked on. Plus its just heartbreaking to see her tiny little body sitting at that big table all alone...(control yourself woman!) Secondly, she's super quiet. She has a tiny little voice and when she's upset she curls in a tiny little ball and quietly weeps to herself. WEEPS! I just can't stand the thought of her being upset and crying in the corner where the teacher won't notice. Ugh. Also, the girl is sort of in la-la land, she is creative and funny and just does her own thing, which I love--but it might not translate so well sometimes. I'm so afraid she's going to be lost in there.

Now for the non-negative part:

The other day we went to the park, within minutes she was wrapped up in a blanket with two other little girls. She makes friends easily and she's not worried about dumb stuff. She doesn't usually let things bother her (because she's in la-la land...), so I'm hoping she'll just be kind of go with the flow-ish. She's sweet and cute and loves to do art and wants to write and read, so I'm SURE she'll have a great time.

Its just the not knowing thats making me crazy.

I may have hurried out to the car trying to hold back tears and then cried like a baby before I got home. And I HATE it when people get all emotional for the first day of school, so once again karma has come back to bite me...

See how my one year old comes up to her chest? Yeah.