Not quite The Plaza

Goodbye turkeys on our wall. Hello Christmas decor...

(please imagine darling pix of Christmas decor here since I'm not really all that on top of it and am slightly dreading pulling out the dusty boxes)


It's been a great couple of weeks. What do Donny Osmond, BYU football and RSL all have in common? That's right--huge wins. We'll take any reason to party over here.

Thanksgiving break was spent enjoying family on both sides and partaking of good food and fun. A lowlight was when I attempted to arm wrestle a pregnant lady and another SIL and stalemated (is that a word?) both times! Totally pumping iron until Christmas so I can have a surefire win and feel good about myself.

Another lowlight was Ethan's middle of the night journey to the ER for breathing difficulties. We can officially say he has asthma. Bummer. He spent a couple nights at the hospital. I had a hard time with him there because in a perfect world there should be no need for a pediatric wing in a hospital. In my mind he was pitiful and looking like this in his hospital bed...


But really he was usually like this.....

The big Cheeseball loved the hotel aspects of the hospital--"Mom, look my own bathroom!" "They bring you food Mom! Like in a restaurant!" "I get my own remote control!" He also didn't mind the one-on-one with mom and dad where we spent lots and lots of hours playing tic-tac-toe, reading and coloring. He's home now and hopefully there won't be another visit to the Hospital Hilton.
That's our update in a nutshell. Gotta go do some pushups now.

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She's the family trophy. They fight over who gets to play with her. She can poke their eyes, scratch their faces, spit on them and they don't try to get even.
My kids, who can be so mean to each other, turn all lovey-dovey when she crawls by. She cries and they will do their best monkey faces to make her beam her 4-teeth smile at them.

Seriously....if I'd known she could turn a hardened 9-year-old boy into a softy, then I'd have had her sooner (don't think about the math on that one too much)

Sadly I know from first hand knowledge that her years as MVP of the house are short. Soon it will stop being so cute when she grabs their toys/food/LEGO creation/ear/hair/nostril and she will become a threat. Her funny sounds will turn "ee-nnoying" (as Ethan pronounces it). Her messes will be her responsibility and not to be pawned off on more responsible sibs.

So my advice to you Syd, is to live it up!

They behave themselves while sleeping

Ethan with Brownie Bear, the pass along germ friend from kindergarten

Two weeks until Thanksgiving and I haven't even peeked in our Thankful Jar to see what everyone's written. Probably because I've had to help them spell half of the words, so it's not like there'll be a lot of surprises....
But there is one word that I've added to the jar that I haven't in years past. And that's the word 'teachers.' Ethan came home from kindergarten today and in the midst of his after-school chatter it came out that he had to put his head on his desk. Apparently he was running around with his jacket on his head and that wasn't appropriate. It also came out that he and the person he sits next to had to be separated due to some excessive talking and less excessive working. Bless his patient teacher.

Ike has a great teacher that plays football with them at recess and brings tarantulas to class. What more could a boy ask for?
Mitch loves his teacher because she's not as strict as all the substitutes he's had. Too bad for him she's having a baby soon and the strict subs will be permanent.
The church teachers are also to be commended (haha I just about typed the word condemned instead! Maybe they feel that way?!) Afternoon church is asking a lot out of my antsy kids and no matter how much I try to bribe them every week to behave, it ain't really translating into sitting still and listening for three hours.

We've had our duds (for some strange reason Ike couldn't handle his second grade teacher who had been a Young Ambassador at BYU. That alone qualified her as an excellent human being in my book, but what do I know?) but for the most part I am thankful for all those who try to patiently and lovingly teach my kids. Even when they run around with jackets on their heads.

Election 09

(What I'll look like voting in a few years)

Another exciting election day is over. My little hamlet had a ho hum municipal election with only one mayoral candidate on the ballot in addition to a couple of city council positions. But a vigorous write in campaign was waged for mayor and the write in candidate won! How exciting is that?
And my dear uncle, in another little hamlet, had a hard fight to keep his position as mayor. He eked out a win and all is well. How exciting is that?

Gay marriage not happening in Maine, Bloomberg spending bazillions of his own money, major governor races in the east....How exciting is that??

I got to tally the votes last night. My alltime favorite election day activity. For one, you don't have to spend 15 hours at the same table as an election judge and fight with people over which precinct they thought they were in, and for another, you are the very first one to get an inkling of what the results are going to be. Sadly, you also see that some people are very inept at voting. Please, if it says mark two candidates then try to only pick two! If you mark three then none of them counts! We also had someone vote for everyone on the ballot. That is a very nice Christian sentiment but in elections they all can't be winners. Then there was one completely blank ballot that confused us. We heard later that an impatient wife assumed her husband was done voting and grabbed his ballot and stuffed it in the box before he'd filled anything out. Apparentely she didn't know that he needed lots of contemplation time?

My favorite was a write in candidate for mayor: Thomas S. Monson. I wonder if he knew he was in the running?