They couldn't place this on the TOP of the box?

Check out #2...how is putting this on the bottom of the box helpful? I have never bought Ottor Pops in my entire life...hated them as a kid so never bought them...so clearly I would need instructions, right?? Vicki and I decided to split a box from Costco, and I had the job of seperating all the tubes. Easy enough, no big deal. Yeah, after I got purple juice squirt all over my kitchen (maybe a slight exageration) from trying to seperate them when not yet frozen. Apparently that is not the proper procedure. Kids, do not try that at home...the tubes just bend and split right open. I didn't discover the "directions" on the bottom of the box until I was looking for the nutrition label (just curious about the calories, that's all).

"I don't want to do the 400..."

Yesterday Spencer had another track meet. Keep in mind, Washington (at least Vancouver) is having record lows for this time of year. Lowest temps in 30 years! So the day before that, it was sunny...might I even say warm? Well, just as we're pulling up to the school it starts to rain. Pour, actually. Spencer does two events, the hurdles and the 400. The hurdles are about a half hour into the meet and I swear the 400 is like 5 hours later! As we're standing there, it's just a terrential downpour, and I'm thinking about how cold I am and how my pant legs are getting wet. Then it hits me...all these kids are in shorts and tanks. AND the temp is cold! Not even warm with rain. So Spencer is soaked to the bones, hands red and hurting. We wrap him in Isaac's coat and rub him down basically for quite awhile. He starts saying he doesn't want to run the 400. Isaac has a way of very nicely and empathetically encouraging him and it always works. So of course Spencer does it and is soooo happy because he came in 5th instead of 6th and last like last week! He was thrilled!! Last week he started to cry...the kind you know they are fighting but can't hold it in any longer...and he said, "I lost. I came in last". I told him, dummy me thinking it would somehow make him feel like I can relate, "Yeah, after all my working out and eating really good I gained 4 pounds". Everyone laughed but him. At least I tried, right? Anyway, when he was coming down the last leg yesterday he looked like he was starting to cry and I just wanted to run out there and grab him and save him from feeling bad. I hate that when you want to protect your kids and make it better but you can't. Not only would I have looked like a moron, I would have humiliated him and besides, I can't fix every hurt for my kids. So on the way home, he says, "I can't believe I almost started to cry because I was sooo cold"! I had to smile to myself...he was cold, not upset at not winning! I am so happy he is enjoying track for the sport, not just for winning. He is the smallest kid on the team...skinniest and shortest, but he gives it his all and he is getting better each week. And he LOVES it.

How the heck do you...????

Okay, I am obsessed with figuring something out. I see all sorts of blogs with pic's of products. From company logos to actual products. One lady had a picture of her favorite lipgloss...looked like it was clipped right out of a magazine. Does anyone know how to do this??? It's driving me crazy because I am not savvy and I want to be able to do that on my blog. Write about something, and be able to post a picture. I realize this is probably not up there with Global Warming (which is crap anyway) or who should be the next president (also crap...or crappy choices) but I still want to know. Any help would be greatly appreciated!! LOLOL

Not savvy, being old and collecting blogs

K, I have a question. If I "collect" blogs like my dad collects bank accounts, does that make me old?? My answer would be yes. However, I don't intend to collect blogs, like my dad intends to collect bank accounts, as did his dad. My problem is that I am way too slow and not at all computer savvy. I have many friends with an array of blogs to choose from as they introduce me to new sites. Over the last few months, I have tried out...I lost count....let's just say several blogs. Now, with all the different web sites I use, from my bank to my cooking, I have way too many usernames and passwords to remember. So I try to use the same username and password for everything. Not safe? Too bad. I am surprised at how many sites already have "that username in use". So I have to fiddle with it to make it work and still be something I can remember. I resorted to making a list and printing it out. Unfortuanelly, I could not remember all of the sites at that time, so there are more out there everyone in the world but me has access too, becuase I don't remember where they are. See, I'm old. Anyhow, so as a consequence, I have numerous blogs, or personal space pages, (or whatever you want to call them) floating out there in cyberspace. I am too lazy to try to find them all and delete them and in fact kind of enjoy the fact that they are out there serving a purpose. The purpose??? That has been the quandry as of late. I have one on Bebo, only because one of my companions from New Zealand (she is from there) "doesn't do facebook". She got me onto Bebo. I feel a connection to her by having one there. Of course, that brings up Facebook. Got one there as well. So, part of the reason I am drawn to different sites, is becuase once I use one, and find another one I like better I switch. Not to mention, I am soooo not savvy on the computer and one little thing takes me an ETERNITY! Just the stress from that alone makes me age about a year every time. My favorite and the one I will use frequently is this one...Blogspot. I have figured out enough to get around and do something somewhat creative on it. Another good reason to stick to this one? I can stop collecting blogs. I can stop the aging process that comes with collecting in only the way old people do. I know I am getting old, I can embrace that, but seriously, do I need to be OLD, OLD??? Let's save that for my dad. Sorry, no offense, Dad. I wonder if my mom collects anything?

Oh Spencer...You crack me up!

Can you figure out what's wrong with these pictures?? Look very closely. I'll give you a second...Okay, now I'll just tell ya. It was backwords day at school, so Spencer thought it would be really funny to go to school truely backwords. If you look closely, you will notice his face looks quite pale. Not so unusual for the "pasty white boy", you think? He took a picture of himself, printed it, enlarged it, and made a life sized mask. In the top and bottom photos, he is actually standing with his back to us, and his clothes on backwards. So when he walks it looks as if he is walking backwards with his head backwards. It was absolutely halarious!! Maybe you had to be there but oh my gosh did we laugh! We thought it was pretty darn clever! Isaac says he makes "nerd-dom look cool". Spencer loves that!

Spring Break

We met up at Cottonwood Beach. It was a beautiful day!!


How cute is Maddy??

Hannah's loooong legs...

Buddies: Abbey and Mikey

"Do you think I enjoyed it"?

This morning I made mine and Abbey's favorite breakfast: pancakes with chocolate chips, strawberry sauce and whip cream...the kind you make yourself from cream. Abbey asked me if she could have the rest of the whip cream out of the bowl. When I cleared the table I said, "Oh good, you finished it for me". She comes back with, "Do you think I enjoyed it"? And giggled her signature little giggle. I couldn't resist taking a picture. :o)

Judgment calls & lessons learned...

We must make judgment calls almost daily. I believe there is a difference between those things and being judgmental of others. I'm not sure why, but this has been on my mind lately, so I thought I'd share an experience I had almost 20 years ago. It is a lesson I learned then, and keep re-learning. Why do I have to keep re-learning this lesson after such a powerful lesson was taught to me so long ago? I suppose it's not so much re-learning it, as it is continually having opportunities to be reminded of the lesson learned...I am often thankful for this experience I am going to share. I have only shared this with a handful of people over the years...partly because I am embarrassed by it, partly because I am far from perfect at this virtue and don't want to sound like I think I am, but mostly because it has had such a profound impact on me that I have kept it close to me personally as a constant reminder. To this day I feel some shame...but I think that is a good thing...

When I was 18 I went to Boston to work as a nanny. One night I went to a fireside with the mother of the family I worked for, and we sat in the back section in the gym. I had been in Boston for a couple of months and I was struggling with finding my own way. I was loving learning more about the gospel, but I was having a hard time with self esteem and being happy on my own...without familiar friends or family around. I was not in the best of moods the night of the fireside. As we got up to leave, my employer wanted to make her way to the front of the chapel to talk to someone, so I followed. I could see way up ahead a girl with long, straight blond hair, and was wishing I had that hair. Dumb, I know now, but when you're 18... So she turned around and the other side of her hair was shaved off. For those of you who lived in this era, that was the cool thing at the time. Shave a portion of the side or underneath your hair. So of course my thought was something like "Oh, she thinks she's cool. That is so lame. And of course eveyone is fawning over her...probably to make her feel excepted since she's a bit on the wilder side". Nice, huh? I am not at all proud of these thoughts. As we got up there my employer gave her a big hug and I just stood there probably scowling, because I know I wanted to just leave. Well, here's the lesson part: A woman approached the girl and asked how she was feeling, and I soon found out by listening in that the girl had cancer. She had had an operation in which her head was opened up. It was then that I noticed the huge scar running from the front of her ear to the back of her head. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die of shame! I was go glad noone could read my thoughts, but what I felt even more was shame and embarrasment that Heavenly Father knew what my attitude was and I wanted to get home and beg for forgivness! So I did. We never know peoples circumstances, currently or from thier history. There have been so many instances since this one that I have caught myself thinking "Okay, I don't know all of the situation...", and it is times like these that I am again thankful for a lesson learned. Even if it was learned the hard way. I believe there are very few situations in which once we know the entire "story" would we place the same judgment on that person or situation. I often think of the scripture that says, "With what ye judge, ye shall be judged" (paraphrazing if course). I don't claim to understand the full meaning of that, but it is enough to make me think. I hope I continue to remember that lesson taught to me so long ago, and I hope to learn equally well the other virtues that I need to work on.

Snow on the Oregon Coast in April??

The view from our front windshield while driving home

Jackson & Abbey
My friend Laura and I went to the coast for a day and night...she took her son Jackson and I took Abbey. It was so much fun...but oh so cold!!! It was windy and it even hailed and snowed. We bundled up and still froze! Our hotel was right on the beach so of course we had to take the kids. They had a blast...because appartently children are immune to the coldness! LOL On Saturday we went up to Seaside (the touristy part of the coast) and spent about 4 hours going on rides, checking out the hugest candy store and just having fun. On our way back home Saturday afternoon, it actually snowed enough on part of our drive that from the photots you would think it was the middle of winter! All in all it was a great weekend getaway and I want to go again durring the summer to really enjoy the beach then!

Easter With The Cousins

Yes, I know it's a bit late in coming, but I am finally posting these. The kids had a great time with thier cousins hunting for Easter eggs and candy. It was really cold and even started to rain!

Anyone up for working out and gaining weight???

A scarey thing happened the other day...

I got on the scale and found that although I had been losing weight, I had gained 4 pounds! "How in the heck did I GAIN weight by excercizing and cutting calories so much"??? I was horrified! My clothes were fitting better, especailly around the waist, but I did notice in my favorite jeans...the ones which I always use to see if I can feel a difference...that the tops of my thighs heading into the bottom of my rear were a bit snug. Time to panic and time to wonder when the way I was feeling (which is GREAT by the way) was going to show!! So I went to my usual circuit training class and I was talking to one of the gals that works there and she laughed! She laughed at me...can you believe that?? When she was done laughing, she told me how that same thing happened to her 4 years ago when she started circuit training and weight bearing excercizes. Okay, so how did I go from walking and losing, to adding circuit training (thought that was a good thing) and gaining? It all made sense when she explained it to me. Doing all the walking is working the cardio (knew that) which burns fat. Doing the circuit training builds muscle (knew that). And since muscle weighs more than fat (about 3x more in fact), I was adding pounds with the muscle. Okay, makes sense, but still, when people start doing this stuff they LOSE WEIGHT, I thought. Okay, so building more muscle will enable me to burn fat quicker and after my body is over the initial shock of thinking I am not feeding it enough anymore, it will start to drop the fat. Turns out when you are doing weights also, you see an increase in your weight for about 8-12 weeks. Nice. Wish I had known that earlier! But the good news is that once that initial period is over, "you should see the fat melt away" she assured me. I'll believe it when I see it!