rough start

I've been a little disenchanted with 2011 thus far. But it's probably my fault. My attitude is a little crappy. I have little optimism for the economic outlook of our humble cabana and for the state of mankind in general. I know, I'm a downer.

Events unfolding immediately around us have been disconcerting. A week ago a convict mistakenly released from prison ran around our nearest mall waving a gun and holding hostages in a Baja Fresh. Luckily he chose to wait two days after I was there to pull his little stunt.

As everyone knows last Saturday a psychopath shot our Congresswoman and fired into a crowd killing a federal judge, a child, and too many others at a Safeway parking lot in Tucson, a city less than 2 hours from here. Too close to home.

On New Year's Eve our family visited the Mesa Temple grounds. It was the last night of the Christmas light display. We hadn't been able to attend before Christmas due to Blake's busy end-of-year deadlines at work. It was a cold evening for Arizona but there were no crowds and the feeling was peaceful and serene. As we looked at the Christus in the Visitor's Center and watched the Luke II movie depicting Christ's birth, I finally felt some Christmas spirit. It was a little late but it was finally there. I had been too busy to feel it before Christmas. I had put off truly embracing the meaning and feeling of Christmas until it was almost too late.

My hope for 2011 is that I'm not too busy or pessimistic or preoccupied to feel the love of my Savior. That I let Him guide me through these troubled, hectic times we are in. Only through Christ is there hope and love and peace; everything the world needs to navigate through days like these.

I resolve to change my attitude and trust His hand in our lives. Amen.

And if it's all right with you, Clark, I'd like to get you something REALLY nice.

We had a strict No Tolerance For Nintendo DS Until Age 10 Policy at our house. Until Black Friday came along and made them affordable for almost 7-year-olds. Watching the young recipient's reaction Christmas morning makes me wonder if relenting was wise. Probably not.

In case you missed the dialogue, so typical of families on Christmas morning: Note the jealousy, the gloating, the threatened punishing. Since when did Blake and I get to sounding so parental?

Me: Oh. Ok, R___

Blake: Here, R____ Finish this.

R: A DS! (triumphal marching/gloating)

Dad, feigning suprise: WHAT???

Big Sis: He gets a DS and I don't? That's not cool.

Me commenting on everyone's open mouth and hyena laughing (what is that? I blame the high pitch on the accoustics of our open floor plan.)

Big Bro: Holy Crap, R____

Big Sis: He's not even ten years old yet.

R: I don't care!

Me: Maybe he needs to just put it in the closet until he's ten. Hey, why'd you just drop it and kick it? Excuse me!

Dad: Don't step on it! You better treat that nice or we won't give it back to you!

Me: Maybe he shouldn't have it until he's ten.

End Scene.

Of course we didn't take it away and of course he played it all Christmas day, despite being three years shy of what policy allows. And of course he's not responsible for such an expensive toy at his age.

But, you know. That's the fun of being parental. We have the rights to make policies and then change them at a whim. It was Christmas for heaven's sake.

any guesses?

Guess which kid asked for a DS even though Santa's workshop doesn't manufacture or ship electronics?

Guess which kid got busted by Santa for trying to get out of sitting on his lap? Yep, the same one that declared himself too old last year.

Guess which one is the best St. Nick impersonator? (Hint: glasses.)

AND

lastly

Guess which one left this little note in his stocking?



I'm so glad he asked. I've been wondering it myself. In only 5 days we will find out!

I'll let you know.

p.s. Since Barb asked I will clarify: each guess is for a different kid, like a matching game, Barb. Because no, the kid too old to sit on Santa's lap was not the author of the above note- and if I tell him you think so, he'll be mortified.

halloween is scarrrrry

The scariest part of Halloween is reaching in to disembowel a pumpkin and pulling out its guts.



Making mummy costumes is scary. I burned all ten fingers with hot glue and blistered two. Then comes the scary part of presenting a costume to a kid after working on it for five hours because there's always the risk of rejection. Luckily both mummy costumes were well-received, although Younger Mummy did spew a few of his wrappings when face-paint was mentioned.

Wandering around Savers looking for Cleopatra ensemble was frightening for two reasons: 1) There's a whole lot to sift through, making it extremely time-consuming for possibly little result (but I totally scored!) and 2) There's always the fear that the Savers smell, which is also a D.I. smell, for those of you who haven't Saver-ed, will never wash off your hands. Ooooh chills.



But then it all comes together. It always does.
And it's time for a nice picture.

Wait! Let's see that again...what is that??



Shiver-y.

p.s. For all of you following the elections tonight, you might appreciate what I was for Halloween, but only a handful of people at Trunk-or-Treat figured it out. I wore a witch hat and cape and a shirt that read, "I'm Not a Witch." Any guesses?

Belated Tidings from The Office Offspring

You'll be glad to know that the child of Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration and Phyllis is thriving. I got this from Dutch Baby for Christmas, again a picture from her church Nursery class that defies every notion of what I think my child looks like. Remember the first picture she brought home to me for Mother's Day (click here to jar your memory)?

Dutch Baby has graduated magna cum laude from Nursery and has been accepted into Sunbeams. She loved her first day last Sunday and had no jitters, even though half of her Pink Ladies Nursery posse was put in another class. She was very excited to be big like her sibs. Hopefully this new phase of her life brings her only happiness, laughter, and joy (and photogenic propensity) at home, at school, at play.

Besides the bearded, jolly fat stuff, did you know:

• that Santa is a Snowbird? Why hang out at the North Pole when Arizona is so pleasant this time of year. Besides, in this day and age, any problems at the workshop can be handled via video conferencing. Every weekend evening in December Santa and Mrs. Claus sit outside their Maricopa home and welcome the children. Isn't that the coolest? I want Blake and me to be just like them when we are elderly. So Blake, sorry, you can't start on that diet. I need you round and bowlfull-of-jellyish. For the kids.

• that Santa's wife is as merry as her spry espoused elf? I laughed when I saw her in spite of myself.
  
  
  that Santa has never heard of Webkins? (Maybe he should spend more time in the workshop.)
  
• that Santa's puppy's eyes can penetrate your soul to see just how naughty you really were? And I do mean the eyes of his actual puppy- see him on the mantle? *Shiver*
  

• that eleven-year-old boys refuse to participate in the annual Santa visit? Yep, this photo lacks my eldest. Why oh why must little boys turn eleven?
  

I'll take a thousand toys...and world peace.

This year a motivated me shopped early and "finished" Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. Then I overheard Young Padawan tell Santa he wants a Webkinz. What!? This had never come up before. I checked his stocking for a note. Sure enough, Webkinz placed prominantly on the list...actually he wrote a request for 80 Webkinz. I'm sure he thought, "Why not? I mean, since you're askin'."


The stockings and lapsittings of other believers in our home brought to my attention listings of other previously unmentioned desirables. A kid's gotta get something specific from the Santa list, right? That's kind of the cardinal rule of Christmas.

This year I learned something about shopping early.
It really just means you shop longer.

on the ode again

Due to technical difficulties with our internet company which rendered a slower-than-dial-up connection, my desire to blog has been hovering around 0%. I logged in today and was pleased to find my connection obligingly efficient. Unfortunately my desire for creative writing has not undergone the same transformation.

So, while I wait for my creative juices to finish digesting all the crap I ate all weekend, I will borrow a little verse Blake composed that deftly sums up our Thanksgiving Holiday 2009:

Bye, Bye, My banana cream pie.

Drove 25 miles just for you to buy.

Shoveled bites down my pipe 'til the pie tin was dry.

I am so fulfilled I could die.

I am so fulfilled I could die.

Today...the pie tin was dry.

p.s. Pie pictured is not actual pie consumed. The Marie Callendar's pie we bought, along with several of its friends, looked even more appetizing than the one shown above.

little hula in these haole hips

Better than candy we got cousins this year for Halloween! Blake's brother and his family came all the way from Utah County just to trunk or treat with the Maricopa 5th Ward. The Grand Canyon side trip was merely incidental.

My sister-in-law Amber had the great idea of dressing up Hawaiian this year and she had no idea what she was unleashing in me. The dormant BYU-Hawaii student awoke and got busy. We just had to have a luau. My handiest resource was the Mataeles, a new ohana in our ward. Pua {whose name justly means flower} agreed to come teach us a hula lesson.
I did my best but was informed I would have been called a disgrace to hula in the island schools. Or maybe she was referring to my dress...


I just didn't get it. Madison High School victory dances did little to prepare me for this.



Mahalo, Pua! Thanks for trying.



Next stop was collecting candy from strangers. And then the luau. We had pani popo (a recipe from the Mataeles), cocunut rice (courtesy of the Boyles- not Hawaiian themselves, but adept at googling Hawaiian recipes), grilled pork kabobs and fruit salad.



You should try this. I loved it. The Boyles' loved it. But the rest of our party kind of didn't. Blake and his brother both asked if the creamy stuff in the pan was a mistake. The kids discarded the milky half of their rolls and complained they were soggy. Bunch of sorry haoles.

Nevertheless we had the best weekend with family here. The distance between here and Utah is getting markedly farther as the kids grow up and realize more what they are missing out on. Who knows but maybe we'll live closer one day? Until then though we will definitely treasure the Halloween luau option Arizona affords us.

Our Ghost of Residence Past

Once we lived with a ghost. Or maybe we didn't. But it seemed like it sometimes. A few posts ago I made a list of all the homes Blake and I have lived in during our slow pilgrimage southward. I mentioned living in a haunted house. Only my sister-in-law Tara asked for more details. So Tara, this post is all yours.

Near Pioneer Park in Provo, Utah sits a cozy genuinely oldtime Provo-esque, brick, early 1900's style house. Blake and I rented it in 2001 with our two kids. It didn't take long to settle ourselves in comfortably. It was the first time we had lived in a house and we were college-poor and furniture-deficient. But we were glad to have room to spread out.

Our first encounter with our ghost occurred during the first week or so of moving in. Blake and I had just gone to bed. Flashing lights and loud music jerked us out of bed along with our 3-year-old's startled screams. His little light-up keyboard had turned on, top-volume. We ran in and turned it off and soothy-talked our poor son back to sleep. But we didn't go back to sleep quite so easily.

During our year there we had a few more 'incidents.' One night (our ghost was a night person) Blake put his keys on the deep window seat like he always did when he was undressing for bed. When we were all tucked in the keys jangled as they fell to the floor. Blake got up and put them back on, this time farther in. He got back in bed, settled the covers up around his chin and then: the keys fell again! Pretty creepy. He placated my jitters by telling me the fan must have blown them off, and then lay in bed awake for a while, wondering....

The best prank our ghost-caper pulled off was after one of the kids' birthdays. We had a helium balloon that was losing air in the front room. When I was turning off the lights for bedtime I realized the balloon was right at the level of a man's head and would be terrifying to see in the dark. So I tucked it into a corner near the kitchen table and went to bed. While we were settling down Blake felt something tickle his hand and looked up to see the shape of a man's head right in front of him! The string of the balloon had run across his hand after the balloon traveled through three rooms on its own accord and ended up in our room. I swear it's true.

We moved to Vegas a year later and our ghost friend was left behind never to bedevil our family again. Something about those old houses creeps me out. Once when I was telling my friend down the street from me in Provo about these weird things she told me that in her similar home she got up to get her son a drink of water. When she turned around to give it to him she saw a little boy in 1800s style clothing wearing a Civil War style straw hat. They made eye contact and then he was gone. Maybe he left to come play with the keyboard at our house.

Today we are seven years ghost-free. The scariest thing in our house today is the dust-eating junk monster that exists under the fridge. And these:

Way Better Than The Hoff: It's Wendy!

In Maui in 1995 I saw David Hasselhoff cavorting in the waves with a buxom blonde; my first celebrity sighting that was really cool. Don't scoff, this was right in the midst of Baywatch hype and at the time America believed he had talent. Blake was serving an LDS mission in Holland and he was even bigger stuff there. Dutch people adore the Hoff.

In the Salt Lake City airport I once saw Wilford Brimley getting off a plane. Alone and ignored, it was kind of sad. Poor guy has a decent portfolio (where would Metamucil be without him?) and should have at least been getting a hounding from a TMZ guy.

In another airport in Missouri I saw Mike Tyson running down a corridor with a full posse of security jogging around him. Well, I kind of just saw his shoulder, but the friend I was with was able to identify him, so I'll count it as a sighting.

In Rexburg over the summer I saw another celebrity at the Whoopee Days parade. Wendy. It may not have been the real Wendy Thomas (her hair looked fake) but I still lept at the opportunity to get a picture taken with her. This woman has had a real impact on me. I dedicated over four years of my young adult life serving the good citizens of Rexburg hamburgers in the manner her father taught me in the training videos.

There's not a person anywhere that doesn't recognize this girl, so I believe this makes Wendy the most famous celebrity I have ever encountered.I was beaming the rest of the parade; glad that Blake, who I'm also a big fan of, was there to share the moment with me.

.

I would love to hear your celebrity sightings: any encounters to brag about?

No Dry Barbecues Allowed

It was a nice sunny 4th of July in St. Anthony, Idaho...until Uncle Ard got out the grill. It never fails.

As Blake and I turned off the freeway to Grandma's, I saw a big grumpy cloud parked right over her house, and blue sky in every other direction. The grill started up, and Mr. Stratocumulus came storming over to rain on our parade. He must really like our company. Why shouldn't he? We're a fun bunch to be around. He invites himself to every barbecue from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
And so we did what we always do, pulled the tables into the garage and chuckled at the odds of yet another barbecue in the rain. Here you can see the blue sky just beyond us while we look through our curtain of rain from the roof.Then Ard turned off the grill, giving our cloud-friend leave to go bother somebody else. We celebrated his departure by getting Chester out of the pasture and taking some rides. I had missed so many rainy barbecues at Grandma's- it was nice to experience one just as I have always remembered it.

FLAT'ter: to represent favorably; gratify by falsification: The portrait flatters her.

Big kudos to the Ward Nursery Staff for putting together this sweet little tribute to the mothers of the little beasts. How they ever got a craft made between all the nose-wiping,poop-patrolling, and goldfish-distributing of thirty-plus toddlers I can only imagine.

Our Dutch Baby brought this home on Mother's Day and while I heartily applaud their efforts, I can't help but add that this is truly the most unflattering picture of any of my children that has ever been taken.

Who's baby is this? If I didn't recognize the glasses that she's wearing as the same ones that I have to take in to get adjusted bi-weekly, or the teeny-tale that I put in her hair in our last-minute morning frenzy of updo before 8 a.m. church, I would have sworn (by looking at this picture alone) that she belonged entirely to someone else.

Like maybe these people of Vance Refrigeration:

obligatory Easter post

with the obligatory Easter Sunday photo where they are all supposed to look perfect for church. See but we have 8 a.m. church so I did the best I could with what I had.No, my oldest two are not twins, despite having perfect twin names and being exactly the same size. I get asked frequently if they are. It's that awkward pre-tween thing.

Four months into having a kid with glasses and I still haven't got the knack of photographing the bespectacled. She comes across pretty Marsie-esque, but who doesn't love a Peanut?

Our young Padawan loved coloring and deviling and consuming eggs. Easter morning he gave us no trouble as we got ready for church. Usually the tantrum starts as soon as he sees me in my skirt: "But I hate Sunday!" Looked like our Family Home Evenings on proper Sunday behavior had finally sunk in Easter Sunday. When we asked why he was being so good, he said sweetly "because it's Easter!" We were proud.

I was a little suspicious but not willing to burst any bubbles. It's peaceful when you're not dressing a kid that's trying equally as hard to undress.

During Sacrament meeting he realized he'd been duped. Easter Sunday is just as boring as regular Sundays. Was he anticipating a Ward Easter Egg hunt in the parking lot? He got ancy when the Sacrament was distributed like normal and started yelling "this sucks!" but I think I was able to muffle it just in time. I'll attribute this behavior to his 24-hour diet of nothing but jelly beans and deviled eggs...instead of poor parenting.

Sprimmer maybe

The month of March in AZ is the perfect combination of spring and summer.

It's jacket-cool in the morning,

refreshing in the evening

~no mosquitos yet~

and you can go poolside in the afternoon.

This year St. Patrick's Day rang in the first pool party of sprimmer.

We swam in green water to celebrate.

From Vegging to Veggies

It's no wonder New Year's resolutions exist, after the ravaging a body takes following Christmas and New Year's celebrations. The way it fell this year made for like 12 consecutive Saturdays (with a Sunday wedged in there, I think). It's been pure gluttony all around. A diet of sugar in all its various forms washed down with Dr. Pepper. I haven't had a vegetable since Thanksgiving dinner. Unless you can count the green onions in the cheeseball our neighbor brought over.

We didn't travel for the holidays and had no out-of-town company but we were blessed to have many fun get-togethers with friends. New Years Eve at the Amador's consisted of at least twenty Rock Band performances of "Eye of the Tiger," breakfast at midnight, and of course, a kitchen full of desserts. Like an I.V. of straight fudge.

And our other holiday days were just as gluttonous as they were spent watching Home Alone (Rafe's new favorite movie- he even demands his hair combed like Kevin) and other holiday favorites on the couch, eating chocolate marshmallow Santa's for lunch, playing board games and Wii games in the middle of the day, and staying up too late hyped up on caffiene.

Blake returns to work on Monday and the kids start school again which means major detox as the year starts in earnest. So for now my New Year's resolutions are:
1) reintroduce vegetables to my refrigerator
2) exercise- to remove the newly-acquired holiday weight
3) go to bed before midnight.

With the state my body is in right now I can't even begin to imagine any other goals. Basic needs must be met first. It will be a few days of stabilization before I can even visualize goals of higher personal, emotional, or spiritual attainment. But that can wait. It's only Friday morning. We still have two more Saturdays until Monday.

At Claire's

Our Butterfly got holes in her ears for Christmas. Since her 8th birthday I told her she could get them anytime and we'd actually walked into "Claire's" twice to do it... and walked right back out with a stomach ache. This time, though, fashion trumped fear. While waiting in line, she did complain about that stomach, but was determined and we got it done. I asked if there was a discount since her name was the same as the store which got a good laugh but no rebate. I figured it was worth asking.

And by the way we had a nice, quiet holiday at home this year. We were privileged to have some special elves named Alisha and Tony do some high-quality wrapping for us at midnight Christmas Eve. The kids weren't up until seven Christmas morning, which was nice, and tore through their gifts with gusto. After opening up many expensive electronic gadgets, they ran to the table and spent an hour with the coloring books, crayons, and markers Santa left them. When Blake and I saw that we realized again we went overboard- the time-tested basics are all they need.

A special announcement: You will all be pleased to hear that my parents gave us a webcam which means we must upgrade our internet service: no more dial up! Now when you call us we will answer our phone, I promise.

Slightly bitter

Christmas cards have been an ordeal this year. I started out ordering them early, before Thanksgiving even, hoping that this year I would beat Keri to the punch. Forty-five cards came to my house with forty-five crotch shots of Claire. I reordered with a digitally-remastered print and a week later addressed my envelopes, awaiting their arrival. In the meantime Keri's card came on December 1, as per usual.

This next batch of 45 came with Conner's name spelled wrong and a missing comma which turns the Love, Blake, Jenna, etc (an affectionate salutation) into a command: Love Blake, Jenna,.... Punctuation and spelling errors were fixed and finally 45 crotchless-grammatically correct cards were sent.

All this trouble will payoff, right? With some holiday lovin' in return? But what do I find: Eleven cards so far. After a final printing tally of 135 cards, I get eleven delivered to me? What is happening here? Where have all the Christmas cards gone, long time passing? Is the world turning its back on this time-loved tradition of holiday greetings? Has cyber-picture-sharing superceded? Perhaps people share enough pictures on blogs and Facebook that they figure their bases are covered. Or it's just due to the economy. December is the only time of year when it's usually fun to get the mail and now it's just bills again. And holiday ads of course.

I still have a few days of mail-checking left so I won't give up on mankind entirely just yet. Thank you to those of you who keep spreading Christmas cheer through Christmas cards: I love you for it!

*Blake and Anna said this post was way angry so I must clarify: I'm bitter that it took three printings and so much time and effort to produce my cards- not that I haven't received "enough" in return....Just wondering if anyone else had also noticed they're getting fewer than they used to...

Obscurer Blessings

I've seen many fellow blogger's blessing lists during this holiday of note. I would be remiss to not publish a gratitude list, but I'm going to tweak it a little. My list list this year is of items of the obscure variety, things that don't usually make thankful lists but definitely make life better.



1. Magna Doodle. An undispensible item due to its ability to keep Dutch Baby reverent at church and because of its usefulness in developing her artistic talents. Here we were able to capture her first humanoid drawing.




2. Elf. When I am asked about family traditions I first think of going to the woods with my extended family to hunt and kill Christmas trees as a kid. The second thing I think of is building our tree (Blake and I went artificial) with Elf on in the background. No tree-dressing ceremony can occur at our home without Buddy and his syrup bottle.

3. White noise. I can't sleep without it. Nothing purrs me to sleep faster than the box fan which hums year-round at our house. It goes on while we're brushing our teeth and is our signal that it's bedtime. Turning it off in the morning means the day is beginning in earnest.



4. My library card. I sat in stunned silence when I first pulled up to the library in Maricopa, unsure if it was really the public library or perhaps some quirky setup where some book-lover rents books out of a spare bedroom. However, a library card is a library card no matter where it's issued. I love that my library card can teletransport me to Italian cafes while Rafe Super Smash-es his Brothers on Game Cube. Library cards are powerful things.


5. Robyn's Ten-Dice Baggie in her purse. Well, back up a little. I guess this blessing's origin lies with Jolene R, who taught us all this fun little dice throwing game in the first place. It's become a sensation here in Maricopa 5th Ward. All my friends are doing it. How thankful I am that Robyn always carries dice in her purse because you just never know.

That's my list. I am so thankful for this comfortable, friend-filled, joyous, love-drenched life that I have been blessed with. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Is it over yet?

Three Halloween parties in four days. Our two youngest had an incredibly good time at a party this morning. A couple neighborhood preschool co-ops were kind to include us. The food was yummy and ghoulish and the games were spooktacular. This boy especially loved doughnuts on a string and boo bowling.

His costume was a hand-me-down from his older brother.

It was too big so we had to amputate at the knees.

Second party of the week: Let's give a cheer for the school carnival.

It doesn't deserve it but the caption fits.
I think this is his teacher, but it could be a Muggle in disguise.

This is the perfect costume for Smalls!
And the glasses make him look even more like Uncle Jason.

Dutch Baby and Padawan attend Music Makers and they were able to dress up this week.
Dutch Baby has worn this twice already and it's pretty dirty. Will she be in the mood tomorrow? Who can predict the mood of a two-year-old? One the one hand it's pretty and twirly. On the other hand I want her to wear it and she has already worn it twice.

We shall see.

Happy Haunting, everyone!