Tagged!

I'm not positive Michelle meant me on her blog BUT I'm in the mood to talk about myself so here goes nothing:


10 YEARS AGO: Wow - I'm old!!! 10 years ago I had just turned 20 and I was 4 months pregnant with Spencer. I was a junior at BYU. Lance and I were living in a tiny basement apartment in Provo. Our bedroom was so small we could only fit our bed in it.


5 THINGS ON MY TO DO LIST TODAY:
(I started this on Wednesday so this is my to do list from then)
1. Work
2. Go to Lakeshore Learning Center and laminate for my FHE packets.
3. LAUNDRY!
4. Paint with Ella while Spencer's at his Odyssey of the Mind meeting.
5. Go to mutual where we did a fun fashion show.

5 SNACKS I ENJOY:
1. Pita chips and hummus
2. M&M's
3. Yogurt mixed with cottage cheese (sounds gross but is really quite wonderful and healthy!)
4. Nachos
5. French fries (I have enjoyed these a little too much lately!)

5 PLACES I HAVE LIVED:
1. San Diego, California
2. Provo, Utah
3. Mesa, Arizona
4. Seattle, Washington
5. Alexandria, Virginia - and now Burke, Virginia

WHAT WOULD I DO IF I WAS SUDDENLY MADE A BILLIONAIRE:
When I first read this I thought it said millionaire so when I thought about my list I was really sad because after paying off student loans and buying a house here in the metro DC area, I would have nothing left! So I'm glad to see it says billionaire.

Let's see . . .

First, I would pay off student loans and all debt so my husband could smile again. Then I would buy us a house (hopefully we would be invited to live on Michelle's block). I would help everybody in my family in whatever way I could (the list would be way too long to go into here). I would buy a ranch for my husband and have hundreds of acres of organic farming for me. But would have people work the farm so I would only have to when I wanted to. I have limited time so let me quickly state - I would open up several places nationwide for troubled teens, I would donate a large portion to AIDS research, I would do something for women and children in Darfur, I would do something to help with the foster care system, I would also donate a large chunk to drug rehab programs for people who do not have health insurance. Finally, I would hire a maid, cook, and nanny so I could be an active part of all my charitable work. I am a much happier person when I am working.

5 JOBS I HAVE HAD:
1. Waitress at Quick Wok. This was my first job. It was a little trendy Chinese restaurant that had the best Chinese food I have ever had. They prepared it right in front of you while you waited. I was actually fired from this job because the wife wanted to hire her niece. The husband felt so bad about it that whenever I came in to order food after that he would always throw in a bunch of free stuff and give me a steep discount.
2. Cashier at a car wash (can't remember the name): I ran the little convenience store where everybody stood and watched as their car was washed. I have two great memories of the place: 1. My sweet little grandpa would show up unexpectedly while I was working and bring me food. He lived over 40 minutes away but somehow always knew when I had an 8 hour shift. 2. There was such a cute, to die for boy working there. He was 18, had an amazing body, dark skin, and the greenest eyes you have ever seen. WAY out of my league. The day I quit he asked me out and even though I had a boyfriend at the time, I was literally unable to say no. We dated for a couple of weeks until it dawned on me that a boy who worked at a carwash should not always have thousands of dollars in his wallet. Turns out he was a drug dealer. Yep, I sure know how to pick them.
3. Phone rep for Marketing Allies in Provo, Utah.
4. Medical Transcriptionist.
5. Residential Appraiser (current). I have crazy crazy stories about what goes on in people's homes but I will save those for another time.

5 THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME:
This one is going to be a little hard since I already wrote 20 things about me that don't involve my kids. But I'll give it a shot.
1. I don't like ice cream unless it has a little milk poured on it. I think it makes it taste so much better.
2. Once at girls camp (when I was 14) I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. My ward was camped up on a cliff above the rest of the stake and the bathrooms were down this really steep hill. Our leaders had told us to try and not use the bathrooms at night because it was too dangerous. Well, I couldn't hold it so I decided to go behind a tree. Upon arriving at the tree I kept hearing a bunch of strange sounds but decided to proceed on. The next day I found out that a bunch of the boys from the stake had invaded our camp that night. The tree I picked was where a couple of the boys (including my crush) were hiding. I was mortified for years.
3. I once caught a snake in the canyon behind our house when I was 13 and kept it for a pet until it latched on to my little sister's finger and would not let go.
4. My bedroom is always messy. I keep the rest of the house clean. The kids bedrooms are always clean. But I cannot manage to keep my room clean. It always looks like a bomb has gone off in it.
5. I have been sneaking dairy the last couple of days even though I'm supposed to be off of it. I had cut it out completely but then got sick. It turns out I have no self control while sick so dairy free starts again tomorrow!

I am tagging Irene, Michelle W, and Aaron.

Conversations with Ella

1. Today as she was running down the sidewalk:

Me: "Ella turn around and come back here."

Ella: " I can't hear you mama"

2. Tonight while she was sitting on my lap looking at my face:

Ella: "Mama I lub your face"

Me: "What's your favorite part?"

Ella: "Your dirty little lips and your big ears."

3. Personal prayers at bedtime:

Ella: "Please bless the food. Amen"

Lance: "Ella stop dancing and I want you to pray again and say thank you for things
that happened today."

Ella: "Dear Heavenly Father - Thank you for things that happened to Jesus today.
Amen."

We are FAM-I-LY

(The title of this post is meant to be sung - sorry if it's stuck in your head now)

Tonight when I was putting Ella to bed I read her the book "Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born." If you are not familiar with it, it is a really sweet book about a little girl's adoption story. I have been trying more and more to tell Ella the story of her birth. She doesn't really understand it at all but she likes to hear it. My hope is that when she is old enough to understand what adoption is, she will be so familiar with the terminology and the miracle of her birth that it will not be surprising to her and that we will be able to avoid (or more easily work through) some of the heartache that go along with adoption.

Anyway . . . and now we are finally getting to the point of my post . . . while I was reading the book, Spencer came in the room and listened the story. As I read I interjected parts of her birth story and part of Spencer's birth story. Spencer asked me if tomorrow I could tell him the story of his birth. I realized in that moment that he was feeling a little bit left out hearing Ella's story over and over.

I tried to explain my rationale behind getting Ella very familiar with her birth story. I tried to explain some of the stigma surrounding adoption. I told Spencer that some adopted children feel like they weren't wanted or weren't loved. Spencer's eyes immediately welled up with tears. He said "But mom, that's not true. Her birth family loved her so much. They loved her enough to do what was right for her. And we love her so much. She's my sister, she shouldn't ever feel that way"

I wish I could have captured that moment and the raw emotion on his face. Lately, my kids have been fighting non stop. They compete over any and everything. The last couple of weeks have been really tough over here. But when it comes down to it, he's in his sister's corner and it was nice to see.

Now, any ideas on how to have more of those moments and less of the screaming ones?

We've reached a milestone

Ella had her hair curled and hairsprayed for the first time today. I used a three barrel curling iron on her hair before church today and we had so much fun. I sat her on the sink so she could watch herself while I curled it. She LOVED the whole process. I'm afraid I've created a monster - she couldn't stop looking at herself in the mirror when she was done and she told several people "I beautiful today."



Here are pics of her hair from behind and a couple of me and her together.

Apostrophe Madness

I'm about to admit I'm a big fat geek but one of my biggest pet peeves is the misuse of apostrophes. It drives me batty! In case any of you suffer from this same malady, there is quite a fun little blog about it:

http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

This doesn't bug me but apparently there are a large group of people annoyed with people using unnecessary quotation marks:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

It's quite fun to look at too (if you are slightly obsessive about things that don't really matter :) )

And now, I am completely paranoid about my grammar and punctuation in the rest of this blog because I usually type without thinking or editing. So forgive me if I have made the same mistakes I just complained about ;)

Area Honors Orchestra

Spencer started taking viola lessons this year. He chose viola based on hearing another kid play Super Mario Brothers Music on the viola. I'm pretty sure that was the extent of his knowledge on the subject. Sadly, I knew even less but we won't go there. He has been diligent with practicing (by diligent, I mean fighting us every step of the way but eventually giving in and doing it). I think his favorite thing is taking songs written for the piano and converting them for the viola. Anyway, we were all excited when we found out he has been asked to play in the Area Honors Orchestra next year. It has been fun watching him progress.

Yankee or Dixie?

Take this quiz -

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html

I am over 60% Dixie - "a definitive Southern score" according to the quiz.

How did this happen??

Oh the Horror . . .

Have to cut out dairy again. :(

Book Review #1

Not really a review, more like incoherent ramblings, but here are my thoughts on some recent books I've read - I'm going to try and keep track throughout the year of what I've read.

1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - Wonderful, wonderful non-fiction book by one of my all time favorite fiction authors. She documents her family's experience living for a year only eating locally grown in season fruits and vegetables. Do not read unless you are ready to drive your family crazy with amazing statistics about farming and organic food.

2. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Picked this up because I saw it repeatedly on a list of people's favorite books of the year. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely a page turner with an interesting twist at the end. I spent one rainy day curled up with hot chocolate and this book (not sure where my kids were at the time).

3. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - Book about a boy who is stolen by fairies who leave a fairy in his place. Alternates points of view between the two boys. I thought it was just okay.

4. Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert - If you haven't read it - find a copy and start. Or call me, I'll send you one (I have 3).

Ella's Room

WARNING: This post is extremely boring if you are not obsessed with decorating.

I am FINALLY posting pics of Ella's room. It is not completely finished but if I wait for that nobody will ever see it. Here it is before:

We first painted it green - which looked like a sickly hospital room at night, here are some pics:



And . . . drumroll please . . . the almost finished product, after we painted it pink. The pink on my computer screen looks darker than it actually is. It is very very pale. So pale that you can't read white letters up against it:

Here's the view from the door:

Not sure if you can see too well but there are butterlies hanging in the upper left corner (Two fell I need to put them back up).

Opposite view of the room:



That is chalkboard paint inside the frame. We weren't going to have any toys in her room but Ella likes to put all the "baby Natalie's" to sleep when she goes to bed at night.

Looking at the end of her bed:

Closeup of the bench and her name:

Aunt Tammy gave Ella the darling bench and Gram made the pillow seat for it. It is so darling!

Close up of pics and vinyl at the end of her bed:

One of the most common meanings of Ella's name is "beautiful fairy princess" so we kind of have a fairy room. I need to put new vinyl up because you can't really see it against the light pink but it says "All it takes is faith and trust and a little bit of pixie dust."

What I still have left to do:

1. Change the vinyl letters.

2. I think I'm going to put white polka dots on Ella's lamp shade.

3. Over Ella's bed I am putting some vintage 1930 prints of flower fairies that I found. I tell Ella an ongoing story most nights about a little girl who finds a fairy inside a flower and goes on adventures with her (my mom made up the story and told it to me when I was young - I just add onto the basic idea). I was so excited when I found these vintage prints. I am going to mod podge them onto canvas and then hang two side by side over her bed with these nail covers from Rod Works:

http://rodworks.com/PansyNailCover-idv-138-29.html

I will probably spray paint them white. I am going to use sheer white ribbon to hang the the prints. Here is one of the possible prints I might use so you can have an idea:

Moving On

Well I have given up for the moment finding the Thanksgiving and Christmas pics I took with my camera. I really hope they are not gone. I have some cute ones of activities we did throughout the Christmas season. But I need to move on with blogging instead of waiting to find them. So maybe you all will see Christmas pics in July or something when I finally come across them. Fingers crossed that I do.

Cutest Baby Ever

This picture of Natalie and my mom on Christmas Eve makes me smile every time I see it. I just want to pinch those cute little chubby cheeks.

Natalie is a big topic of conversation in our house. Ella has named all of her dolls "baby Natalie." When we put out our Nativities for Christmas, she insisted that baby Jesus was actually baby Natalie. When I tell Ella her adoption story she often asks if we can go bring baby Natalie home to our house :) It is so cute!

True Meaning of Christmas

When we are in town, we spend Christmas Eve with my cousins. It is one of my favorite days of the year. I love it when we all get together. It is really interesting to me that even though we all grew up so far away from each other and didn't see each other for years, we were able to pick up right where we left off. When I'm with my cousins it FEELS like home. I'm really lucky to be so close to 5 more amazing women.

Anyway . . . we have noticed in the past years that we tend to be a little excessive with gifts on Christmas Eve. We all didn't have the best childhoods growing up so we I think we overcompensate with our children no matter how hard we try not to. So this Christmas Eve we decided to adopt a family. Sandy found a single mom with 3 teenagers who just took in her niece and nephew who are 4 and 6. I'm not posting this to brag about what we did but to remember how good it made us feel to help this family. We went a little overboard so next year we are going to adopt 3 or 4 families. Here is a pic of all of us and the gifts for the family:

Check out Aaron in the far back left of this picture. I just noticed it - he cracks me up.

I'm posting this picture of us eating dinner so you can get an idea of how much we had. This whole table was covered with gifts for the family, as well as having gifts under the table and on the side of the table:

I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall when our adopted family had Christmas. We have all been recipients in past of families adopting us for Christmas and it felt so amazing to give back. I hope they had the Christmas of their dreams.

The Baby Whisperer

Lance has always been so great with kids. Natalie loved being held by Lance on Christmas Eve. If anybody tried to take her from him she would cry and then stop crying when he would take her back. His calling right now is in the nursery which he thinks is the greatest calling in the world. Every Sunday morning he gets phone calls from parents thanking him for the job he is doing and he often gets cards and treats from the kids. I married a good man.

The Real Butterscotch

Those of you with girls understand my love/hate relationship with this horse. Ella wanted one for Christmas so bad!! She told everyone that she knew that she was going to be a good girl and Santa was going to bring her "Butterscotch." She accidentally found one of her Christmas presents hiding in my closet and she said "Oh no Santa brought the wrong thing, take it back to store and get Butterscotch." As much as I love to make my little girl happy, I just couldn't justify shelling out the almost $300 for a toy that didn't seem to do all that much. Luckily, Aunt Sandy saved the day!!!! Sandy lives on a farm in the neatest house built in the late 1800's out in Greensboro, Maryland. She gratiously volunteered to let us tell Ella that Santa left a pony for her at Sandy's house where it could be taken care of. She even let Ella rename it. Christmas Eve we went over to Sandy's and all eagerly watched Ella's reaction to getting what we considered the best present a 3 year old obsessed with horses could get. Ella was uncharacteristically shy at first but as soon as everyone (and all their cameras) went back inside, she really warmed up and was so excited!

Another Thanksgiving!

I am so excited because I accidentally deleted these pictures but just found out that my mom had some on her camera. My cousins held Thanksgiving a week early so that we could all have Thanksgiving together. I was happy that they did that because my favorite time of year is when we all get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am so lucky that I get to live near all of them. They are more than cousins - they are sisters. Thanks Stephane for hosting this!

20 Things

Taking another slight break from the updates. Saw this on a message board and thought I would try it. Who knows - maybe I'll learn something about myself if I can make it through the whole list.


20 THINGS ABOUT MYSELF THAT DON'T INCLUDE KIDS


1. I LOVE to read. Love, love, love it. I constantly am reading 4 or 5 books at a time. We purposely moved right next door to a library so I always have a supply of books. I sometimes worry about going blind because then I wouldn't be able to read.

2. I finally turned 30 this year. It was very welcome as I have felt on the edge of 30 forever.

3. I once performed in a circus at a Club Med in Ixtapa, Mexico. My act was the Spanish Web. I also was on the trapeze and rode a bike with 7 or 8 people on it at once.

4. I collect pitchers and pottery. I'm looking right now at old pottery on ebay to bid on. No idea why I love it so much - just do.

5. I feel a strong connection to Italy - maybe I lived there in a past life (j/k). Italy is my dream vacation.

6. I am a closet hippy.

7. I miss dancing. When I was in highschool I performed with two different folk dance groups. I miss it all the time. As soon as we are not so busy, Lance will be taking folk lessons so we can dance together (he doesn't know this yet).

8. I really like to find good deals and then tell everyone how much I paid for everything.

9. I am extremely shy but I think I hide it well.

10. My dream job would be teaching seminary or high school English. I love working with teenagers.

11. I am psychic - no REALLY I am!

12. I loathe myself for the amount of TV I watch but don't do anything to change it.

13. I am 15 lbs overweight but refuse to do anything to change that. I blame the weight on my medications and am fine with that :)

14. I am trying to buy a 1/4 of a cow right now. I only want my family to eat grass fed, free range beef. Along the same lines, I am excited for the farmer's markets this year. I am going to try and only buy our produce from them all season, not from a grocery store. I feel passionately about supporting local farmers.

15. I am terrified of starting the next round of medications the doctors have for me so I have been putting it off. I know it would help but I am afraid of even more weight gain - which is just silly.

16. I love being busy. I turn into a nasty mean grouch while I'm busy but I love projects, deadlines, and stress. Go figure.

17. I have recently learned to knit. I am currently making a very "interesting" scarf.

18. I have terrible insomnia. 2 to 3 hours of sleep a night has been the norm for quite some time now.

19. I really want to take Tae Kwon Do or Karate.

20. I have minor OCD which drives everyone crazy except me :)

So Proud of My Son

I had to take a break from updating my blog to mention how proud I am of Spencer. If I don't do it now, by the time I've caught up I will have forgotten to post this. I am impressed by Spencer on a daily basis. The other day he told me his friends in the neighborhood were having a Nintendo DS Wi-Fi party and they were playing a game that was rated "teen" for a lot of violence. He told the boys he wouldn't play that game and his friend told him to not bother coming then. I felt bad for him and offered to look at the game and see if I felt it was okay for him to play. He told me he knew it wasn't right and he would rather miss the party than do something wrong. He has so much integrity. I am very proud of the person he is becoming.

The Perfect Gingerbread House

Check out Ella's gingerbread house. If you look closely you'll see that everything was placed symmetrically on both sides. She had free reign when decorating and impressed us all. The only part I helped on was the icing. She is so like me - we both love order!

Tiny (And Not So Tiny) Racers

After Nascar, we decided to get in on the action ourselves and take the kids racing. Maddi and Ella were so cute riding around the track. We didn't purposely dress them in matching outfits, it just ended up that way.

Lance, Spencer, Scott, and Michael got to race the real Go Karts. Here are the promised pics:

Nascar

What a fun time! While in North Carolina we took the kids to the speedway to see where they race the cars. The kids had a blast!

We look like we were airbrushed into this photo but we really were there - I promise!

Thanksgiving

Top 5 things I am grateful for this year:

5. Ella being potty trained. The thought of not having to buy diapers anymore makes me giddy with joy!

4. Family support. This has been such a hard year in so many ways, but my family has really helped me through it. A combination of me, chronic pain, and medication side effects, does not make for a very good time. Luckily they have laughed, (and cried!) right along with me.

3. Lance being done with school. Yes, he has been done with school for well over a year now but this will be on my top 5 for many a year to come.

2. My husband. Yes, so incredibly cheesy - I know. We hit the big 10 year mark this year and I couldn't imagine anyone more wonderful to experience life with.

1. Having family live close enough that we can invade them on Holidays. We have lived so far from family most of our marriage that is has been really nice for our kids to have a chance to get to know their cousins.

This year we went to North Carolina for Thanksgiving and spent it with Lance's brother Scott and his family. The kids had a BLAST (and us adults had fun too). After the Thanksgiving meal we played a couple games of croquet. Thanks Scott and Michelle for letting us visit with you guys!

I LOVE this last picture of the kids. Scott reminds me of the Pied Piper - I think he could have made them do anything. Could Ella's smile in the third picture be any more fake?

Happy Halloween

Halloween was awesome this year. Spencer went as Mario with Ella as Princess Peach. We are so lucky to be in a neighborhood full of kids. The kids had a blast running around with their friends. Once Ella realized that candy was given to her at every door, there was no stopping her!

Cox Farms

Every year our family goes to Cox Farms in early October. They have so much for the kids to do - a hayride, slides, rope swing, goats, etc. This is the first year Ella wasn't afraid of the goats. Here are some pics of our fun day . . .