My Ducks were All in a Row

Yesterday was one of those days where my schedule was tight. Two morning appointments, early release from school. Field trip to the movie theater with the cubbies. I dashed home, spent 10 minutes putting some jello in the freezer, baked potatoes in the oven for dinner, loved on crying Liam, reassuring him that I would be back soon, and dashed out again for violin lessons. Sat and knit while Logan played, and raced back home. I called the boys on the way home from violin and asked them to take the jello out of the freezer, and set the table. I pulled in the driveway coiled and ready to spring into dinner action, because mutual was in less than an hour. "How was I going to be able to be there?" I asked myself. I'd already been gone from Liam for the last three hours. I descended on the kitchen only to find my baked potatoes not in the oven where I left them. They were all neatly placed on the counter and still hard as a rock. Raw. I was struck dumb. Then I could only speak in half sentences. "Wha...how?" "Who?" and "Why?!!" It turned out the boys in their infinite helpfulness heard the oven beep right after I left. You know, how the beep when the oven is done preheating is the same beep when the timer goes off? I hadn't left any instructions concerning the oven. I'd just told them to keep their brother happy and watch Mythbusters, a show the male member of the family love dearly. But they heard a beep.
Those nice, big, fat baker potatoes went back in the oven. I curled up in the fetal position on the couch and watched the Barbara Walters special about the Oscars. Why? Because I was discouraged and needed to go to another place. When the potatoes were done, The kids ate and I resumed my hiding. Mutual had long since started. Dang. My feelings of being a loser mom and being overwhelmed just increased. Then there came a little thought: you're just feeling this way because you're tired. It's been a super busy day, cut yourself some slack!
I wandered over to the piano and started playing some hymns while the boys finished their dinners. I started to feel less guilty. "The big boys may be missing church, but at least they're getting a little spirituality snuck in there!" I smiled to myself. I saw Logan slip downstairs and emerge with his violin. He smiled to me and began to play 'If you could Hie to Kolob' with me. Then we moved to 'God Moves in a Mysterious Way'. Then on to 'I Am a Child of God'.

Precious.

I grabbed Dallin's copy of The Order of the Phoenix, and flopped back down on the couch. (He's 9, and reading the series for the first time. Can you think of anything more magical than that? He's been buried in them for weeks.) "I'm reading aloud in 10 minutes!" I announce. "Get the table cleared and wiped, so you can listen!" There was a flurry of activity, and soon we were all cuddled up, worrying with Harry about his hearing at the Ministry of Magic. After finishing the dishes, Logan made brownies. Lewis walked in, just in time to eat brownies and ice cream, and help get the kids in bed.
My evening didn't go like clockwork like I'd planned.
But, wow.

Her Parents Shoulda Called Supernanny

My sister-in-law recently introduced me to abc.com. You can watch all the new episodes of Supernanny in hd there. We're new to Supernanny, and let me tell you, it's entertainment for the whole family. My kids are in awe of the tantrums, the bad parenting, the sassiness. During the little commerical breaks, we look at each other slack-jawed and I ask the boys, "If you were the dad, how would you have handled that?" Or, even better, "What would have happened to you if you did THAT to me?" We watched this poor lady this morning, who had just missed her flight to San Francisco. I say poor lady, because she never appears to have had anyone love her enough as a child to smack her out of it. I could understand if maybe her baby or diabetic grandmother were on the flight, but that does not appear to be the case.

From the AP article:"The three-minute video shot on a mobile phone shows a woman wailing, throwing herself on the floor, banging on an airport counter and trying to barge through a closed boarding gate at the Hong Kong International Airport on Feb. 4 after missing a flight to San Francisco.
"They have no compassion. The plane hasn't even left, and they've shut the gate. They're crazy! They're crazy!" the woman shouted."



Supernanny, she needs your help!

Bless You Netflix!

I'm still recovering from my trip to San Diego (and I still have some good stories to tell; nights punctuated with night-time drama, emergency vehicles and my husband extracting promises from me that I will never, ever do a certain something again) and until I'm all the way back on my feet, I'm clocking some serious couch time. Yesterday morning I slept through multiple episodes of some BBC dinosaur show with my two youngest cuddled up with me. After I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and did my work for the day, I collapsed again and stumbled upon the most fascinating movie.

Know anything about Sri Lanka and their civil war? I didn't know anything either. I'd heard about the Tamil Tigers during the aftermath of the Tsunami; my midwife went there to deliver babies. This movie paints a vivid tear-jerking picture of the life of a little girl who finds she was adopted out from that region. It has the music and flair of Bollywood, and some of the locations will stop your heart. I can't wait to do some research and learn exactly what the fighting is all about. Again, like most of the movies I recommend, it's not in English, but don't let that stand between you and an unforgettable experience.

Live From San Diego

In which Earlgirl shares travel mishaps, toilet tragedies and more.
So I'm here in beautiful San Diego at an ACN convention with a room full of exceedingly fun gals. It was a rocky road of traveling to get here, believe me. We had to fly in a little turbo prop airplane over a mountain range. Patty and I were snug in our seats, vibrating away to the drone of the engines, pitching up and down with turbulence, when this cute mommy with a toddler on her lap leans across the aisle and asked if we had any airsickness bags. We gladly hand her ours, and watch with curiosity. Nothing appeared to me wrong until her daughter started to retch. Remember the movie 'Stand By Me'? The 'total and complete barfa-rama' scene? We lived it. The girl covered her poor mommy. She filled mommy's shoes. She splatted the seat in front of her. Then came the smell. "Focus on the window, smell your juice!" Patty admonished me. I did, and it worked, but I don't think I've recovered yet. It was a very close call.
Then today, I was at the convention with a fresh spiral bound notebook, ready to imbibe wisdom. I took a quick trip to the potty first, and balanced my notebook on the toilet paper dispenser. You guessed it. After I stood and before I flushed, in went my notebook. It was a pitiful sight, let me tell you. There was nothing for it but to grab it by its dry corner and bid it adieu. We had a fantastic conference, and an eternal night-time walk back to the hotel fraught with danger. I arrived back at the hotel anxious for a trip to the ladies room. I had exercised my considerable powers of retention all during the long, long, long walk. It was with great relief that I was able to unburden myself. As I sat there, contemplating life and the meaning thereof, a thought struck me. I was still wearing my jacket that ties around the waist. Instead of belting it in front, I had knotted the belt behind me to a maximize the slimming effect. Just as I suspected, the ends were floating in the toilet water. Ew.
It's not my day for toilet luckiness, is it?
Don't feel too sorry for me though, I'm not cooking, cleaning, or being blamed for items my children have lost. It's all good.

Another 'Mother of the Year Award' coming my way.

A few weeks ago, a really bad cold went through my family. Almost everyone fully recovered. Kelton was left with a sore throat and swollen glands. Some days it would be bad, others it would pretty much go away. He was still chipper and enjoying life, and I let him miss a day or two of school on the days it was painful in the morning. Liam had a pretty bad cough that gradually recovered to where he only coughed maybe once an hour. It was a deep and wet sounding cough, however infrequently I heard it.

I finally made and appointment to take Kelton in, and wouldn't you know it, he woke up feeling fine. No sore throat. His glands were still like marbles, so I figured "What the hay, it's a $30 copay. At least he'll get looked over."

No fever, no red throat, big glands: sinus infection. It must not have been a very serious one. Just as we were getting ready to leave, I mentioned Liam's cough. Can I tell you, I have the best pediatrician! He didn't hesitate, and reached for Liam with a serious face. He frowned when he listened to his lungs. Pneumonia. Yikes.



It was the 4th case he'd seen that day.

No fever either, happy, playing, just an occasional deep cough.



Pneumonia.



I was so glad that I followed that whim to just go in anyway!

So here's to my poor little Lee-bee.

True Story

On Valentine's Day, my husband was out of town. I decided to surprise him by writing a Facebook note on 25 things I love about him. I worked on it for the whole morning. I was on #23 when Liam came over and pushed a key, I have no idea what it was, and my note was gone. Poof! Gone. Irretrievable. It had been clever, tender, funny, and absolutely impossible to reproduce. Sad, huh? I have now decided to dedicate an entire post to telling one story that I think was #17. It's too good to be missed.

One of the things I love about my husband is that he's brave.

He's always thinking of contingencies- what to do if a car swerves in front of us in our lane, what to do if this or that bad thing happens.

One day he was driving to work and took a turn he'd never taken before. Just as he realized his mistake, he saw a pregnant woman hurrying across the busy street pulling a toddler along behind her. As he approached, he saw another car coming, and it was obvious to Lewis that the other driver couldn't see her because of the glare. Without thinking, he sped up and stopped his car between the woman and the other car. The driver screeched to a stop, barely missing Lewis' demo car and was furious with him for being in his way. He never saw the woman and child he almost hit.

Brave and heroic? That's just the beginning.

A few years ago Lewis was in school full-time and in order to see each other, we had to sneak late-night dates to fast food joints. It was a hot summer night when we decided to hit Carl's Jr. As we pulled up, I was jabbering away, trying to download a whole day's worth of thoughts in a short time. I didn't notice that a car had pulled up the wrong way, parallel to the entrance. Lewis noticed him though, he saw him pull up farther until the driver could see the counter and who was working. He told me later that the hair rose on his neck. He'd parked by this time, as had the suspicious car. He'd just decided that we should just bag it and go, because of the bad feeling he had about the situation, but I was already almost to the restaurant door. A short skinny Mexican kid got out of the car beside us. He was wearing a big, puffy satin coat, with one arm tucked in the front zipper concealing something. I noticed this, and thought it was odd, but what was odder was what my husband did. He held the door open for the guy, and looking down at him with a smile, clapped his hand on his shoulder, greeting him in a really friendly way. The guy looked way, way up at Lewis and smiled nervously. I assumed that Lewis must have known him from school. The kid walked up to the counter and just stared at the lone teenage girls working the late shift, all the time holding his hand inside his coat. None of the girls working seemed to recognize him. He never even glanced at the menu. My husband walked right up and stood behind him, right in his space. He looked from the girls, to Lewis, then back again. Before long, he walked out without a word.

All this time, I was oblivious. I was thinking about what flavor of milkshake I wanted. I didn't know that Lewis was calculating what he would do if the guy whipped out a gun. Depending on the caliber, he had it all planned out and was ready.

Now is he a handy guy to have around, or what?

Photo tagged by Michelle

I get to pick the 6th folder in my pictures, and pick the 6th picture and tell you the story behind it. My problem is, I only have 4 folders. I have a new computer and I haven't transferred all my photos over yet. I've been putting it off until I can get my boys to do it for me, but they're too busy transferring their music. Who knew that Weird Al would still be popular with middle schoolers? "I'm Fat" is actually Dainon's ring tone for me. Am I offended? No, it's just his sense of humor. Which leads us to the photo. I picked the last of my folders, six files down, this is what you get:

I call it "Foot- A study by Dainon".

Hey, at least it's clean! Stained, but clean. I'll take what I can get. I don't discourage the boys' use of the camera, because I love the random things they come up with. For example: My husband's brother adopted a son (he has 6 cute blond daughters, and this little guy kind of fell in their laps) and invited us to see them be sealed together as a family in the temple. I was so excited to go, I'd never been able to witness that before. Sadly, Lewis had to work. I took Dain with me on the road trip. I got the traditional picture of him in front of the temple, but he had the camera the rest of the time. What kinds of pictures did I get?

Sports cars, or course. He's a teenager, right?

Then he branched out a bit, and took a picture of every vehicle we passed.
This was the morning after Halloween, so he brought his candy with him. Where did it end up? All over his clothes, along with some newsprint belonging to the comics he always reads. Oh, he was in fine shape by the time we got to the temple!

So there you have it. That was quite the story attached to that foot!